Fire!

In Fire!, we assist to a rescue of a woman from a burning building. Thanks to editing, were shown different spatial views: from the street and from inside the house. Each cut corresponds to a change of scene and viewer’s perspective, while remaining in a flat linear time, finally freeing cinema from its theatrical origins, introducing the first editing techniques designed for space manipulation.

Williamson, while not using the expressiveness of alternate editing (it will be refined only in 1907, in the movie The Runaway Horse), tries to stage the whole procedure of a rescue by an heroic team of firefighters, mixing together action and drama.

The film will hit Edwin S. Porter straight to the heart, which will realize, a few years after, the movie Life of an American Fireman, almost plagiarizing the work of Williamson (at that time, there’s no copyrights, so it was a common practice) dipping it in a further dramatic atmosphere.