The Dream of a rarebit find

Directed by: Edwin S. Porter, USA, 1909

USA, 1909


Cast and Credits

Production Edison Manufacturing Company
Director Edwin S. Porter
Cast Edwin S. Porter

Technical specifications
Technical Details: Format: 35 mm - Black and White,
Sound System: silent

Remarks and general Information in German: «"The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend” was a popular comic-strip series by illustrator Winsor McCay. A regular feature in the New York Telegram from 1904 until 1914, McCay’s most successful cartoon strip always began the same way: with a portly gentleman who had overindulged in a dinner of Welsh rarebit, a kind of cheese fondue over toast. The combination of grated cheese, beer, butter, and seasonings led to rarebit-induced nightmares of epic proportions. In McCay’s strip, the first frame depicts the diner getting into bed or falling asleep, and the succeeding frames are filled with remarkable dreams beautifully drawn about phobias and anxieties, ones often attendant on modern urban life featuring cityscapes, skylines, and skyscrapers. The strip ends with the dreamer awakening. The Edison Manufacturing Company film The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, made by Edwin S. Porter and Wallace McCutcheon, emphasizes instead the illusion that inanimate objects move of their accord (e.g., the bed hops up and down, shoes move by themselves) and that the dreamer in his bed flies through the night sky.
The movie opens with a medium shot of the gentleman-diner drinking alcohol and eating rarebit. But immediately after this conventional emblematic shot, Porter begins to employ tricks. The second shot is a double exposure of the gentleman, a swinging lamppost set in an exterior cityscape, and a background of panning, blurring New York City streets. As Charles Musser has written, “It suggested the subjective sensation of the fiend’s predicament without being a point-of-view shot”. After cinematically establishing the fiend’s inebriated state, the film depicts the man’s drunken adventures in his bedroom, a studio interior. First, his shoes appear to scamper across the floor and then the furniture disappears – the result of stop-motion cinematography.
The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend took longer to produce and was a more elaborate production than most films of the time. Increased sales at Edison gave Porter and his collaborator Wallace McCutcheon (who left Edison for Biograph shortly after this film was released) the ability to work more painstakingly, using miniatures, scripts, and the unheard-of length of 2 months’ time to develop the elaborate effects in this movie. As the manufacturer’s catalogue said, “The picture is probably best described as being humorously humorous and mysteriously mysterious, and is certain to make the biggest kind of a ‘hit’ with any audience. Some of the photographic ‘stunts’ have never been seen or attempted before, and but few experts in photography will be able to understand how they are done.” The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend has generally been credited as an important American-produced antecedent of animated film.» – Lauren Rabinovitz, Pordenone Catalog 2009

General Information

The Dream of a rarebit find is a motion picture produced in the year 1909 as a USA production. The Film was directed by Edwin S. Porter, with , in the leading parts. We have currently no synopsis of this picture on file; There are no reviews of The Dream of a rarebit find available.

Bibliography Giornate del Cinema Muto Pordenone 2009, Katalog

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