Film History Essentials: Kidnapping by Indians (1899)
At the dawn of film as an industry, virtually anyone with some capital and technical know-how could jump into the film business and potentially become quite successful relatively quickly. Most of these small startups vanished just as rapidly, whether after a few years or several, sometimes for reasons that aren’t very clear, and often with little or no trace of their output left behind. One notable exception is the firm of Mitchell & Kenyon, and their film company, Norden.
Sagar Mitchell (see right) and his father owned a business that manufactured and sold cameras and other photographic apparatus. James Kenyon ran a furniture dealership, but also supplied penny-in-the-slot machines (like the Mutoscope) to traveling showmen. The two men were located just a few blocks from each other in the heart of Blackburn, Lancashire, in the north of England. They became partners in a motion picture enterprise at the end of 1897, and at first specialized almost entirely in local films for the entertainment of local people.
That changed in the spring of 1899, thanks to Kenyon’s connections with traveling shows. They were commissioned to make a film for one of Kenyon’s itinerant clients, and within a few months, their films were being seen all over the country. Later that year, they began producing popular dramatizations of battles in the ongoing Boer War, and later of the Boxer Rebellion. After a few years, they established a studio on property owned by Kenyon a few miles to the northeast, and for much of the first decade of the 1900s, they were among the country’s leading film producers.
Near the end of the decade, however, they seem to have simply stopped producing films for distribution outside of their hometown. By 1913, they had stopped producing films entirely. In 1915, Kenyon (16 years Mitchell’s senior) retired to the seaside. Mitchell had already returned to running his original business, now joined by his son, even before he and Kenyon had entirely stopped making films together. Mitchell died in 1952, his son retired several years later, and the shop passed out of family hands.
For decades, only a few of the Mitchell & Kenyon films were known to have survived. Then, in the mid-1990s, workers demolishing the building that once housed Mitchell’s old shop found a treasure trove of film canisters carefully stored in the basement, where they had lain, safe and forgotten, for some 80 years. In all, there were around 800 films preserved down there, presenting film historians and archivists with the monumental task of salvaging and transferring them from the volatile nitrate film they were printed on, so they could be seen by audiences once again.
One of Mitchell & Kenyon’s first nationally-successful films was Kidnapping by Indians, released in September of 1899. With the English countryside standing in for the American West, the film certainly has a distinctive look. Even more notable, though, is that this is the earliest-known Western narrative film. Dickson had made films of performers from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West a few years before, but none of them were fiction, or even told a story. Kidnapping by Indians pre-dates The Great Train Robbery by four years.
It may seem strange that the subject of the Wild West would suggest itself to filmmakers in an industrial town in Britain. There was a thriving textile industry in Blackburn for several hundred years, but during the industrial revolution, the town became one of the largest producers of woven fabric in the world, supplied by American cotton. As a result of that economic connection, James Kenyon met some visiting Americans when he was young, and local people who traveled to the United States for business also returned with stories that ignited his imagination and inspired a local fascination with the Wild West.
Screening:
Kidnapping by Indians seems to actually refer to two different Mitchell & Kenyon films. One is brief, straightforward, and delivers more or less exactly what that title suggests. The other is deeply bizarre and almost incoherent, and it is the latter that is (currently) widely available for viewing. The British Film Institute calls it “baffling” and suggests that it is “abortive material” from the other film, and/or “may be a scene from a well-known show” of the time. Below is the only available version of the original film that I have been able to locate:
Because it is edited together under an interview, and is playing variously in the background and the foreground, it doesn’t run uninterrupted from start to finish. However, virtually the entire film does seem to be there. A woman comes out and sits to dandle a baby on her lap. Two men dressed as Indians approach stealthily, and one clubs the woman with his fist and snatches the child. The woman falls to the ground, and the man motions to his companion and hoists the baby above his head. The other man takes aim at the baby with his rifle, and seems about to shoot when a cowboy appears and shoots him instead.
The mother is able to recover the baby as the cowboy and the remaining Indian engage in a highly-choreographed knife fight. The fight includes some eye-catching acrobatics, though their execution clearly requires that the two combatants be cooperating rather than actually fighting. Soon, the Indian falls dead of a knife wound, and the cowboy rushes over to kneel behind the woman. He stretches a hand heavenward in an ostentatious Victorian stage pose.
The film is chiefly interesting because of the early date of its production, though it does make effective and exciting use of its brief runtime. The alternate version or “abortive material,” though, is extremely unique for its time. From a period when even actual completed films were often cast aside or destroyed, it is incredibly rare to see footage of a production that was apparently never released (if that is indeed accurate).
The first thing that stands out are the costumes. No one would guess that the woman at the beginning of the film is in a Western. She looks like a refugee from a Renaissance fair. Her visitor is clearly a woman, but she is also wearing much of the same costume that the cowboy was wearing in the other film. Likewise, the first man who creeps into the scene through the underbrush seems to be wearing the same costume as the main Indian in the other film, but his companions are a motley crew indeed.
The other man who approaches is dressed as a frontiersman, complete with a fur hat. Also among the raiders are two women. The first is wearing what appears to be some kind of traditional European folk dress. She is also outfitted with a feathered headdress and lots of different extra bits presumably intended to disguise that fact. The other woman looks like nothing so much as a wood sprite from a Shakespearean play. She is wearing tights and pantaloons and some kind of leafy crown on her head. She spends most of the film doing what is presumably meant to be a war dance while brandishing a knife.
The action that follows their arrival is equally weird. There is an exchange of gunfire, and then the two men begin beating on the house (?) with the butts of their rifles. It’s not clear whether they’re pretending to hit the women inside, or trying to gain entry, but the woman in cowboy clothes is clearly visible firing out of some sort of opening the whole time. And somehow not hitting the two men directly adjacent to her.
After the raiders set fire to the structure, she runs out and continues firing. There are two armed women standing directly next to her, but they all ignore each other. She doesn’t appear to hit anyone before she suddenly throws up her arms and falls over. (It’s also not clear why this happens, as there is no shot visible, and three of the four raiders are on-screen and not wielding any guns at that moment.)
Again, when the cowboys arrive, there’s a lot of gunfire exchanged, but to very little effect. They completely ignore the two women right next to them, who run away. The surviving woman in the house runs out, and the two remaining raiders grab her. The response of the two cowboys is to start firing wildly into the midst of the three. One of the raiders goes down. The other draws a knife and grapples with one of the cowboys, who finally throws him off and fires that gun at him (off-screen) just as the film ends.
That pair of cowboys who arrive at the end are the only solid indication (aside from the first Indian) as to the actual genre or setting of this film. It is also not typical to see women in most of the roles that they take in this film. The explanation may be as simple as what performers happened to be available at the time. And, of course, as perhaps the earliest narrative Western film, there are no pre-existing tropes for this film to ignore. Also, the filmmakers clearly have very little awareness of details like the actual appearance of Western-style or Native American dress, or what the motivation or composition of a Native American raid on settlers might be.
In other words, it’s not a lack of adherence to genre conventions that lends some interest (and unintentional humor) to the production. It’s the lack of authenticity that borders on the fantastical. Some of those constraints, like the location that doesn’t bear any resemblance to a traditional Western setting, can’t be helped. Others, like what resources were available for the costumes, may have also been outside their control. Still, even being as generous as possible, at least some of what makes this feel silly is the sense that this is an interpretation of cowboys and Indians by a group of people who know very little about either.
Moviegoings 