Strictly average movie

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

In compare with other Edison (Dickson) installaments, this footage for me is poorest (eventually better than Monkeyshines). Quality is bad and in comparison with Men's Boxing it doesn't show any progress, quite to the contrary. Good things that film brings to me is increasing of my general knowledge. Until now I have no idea what Indian clubs are and what is their purpose. Second thing about that movie is that this movie was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It is currently the oldest film chosen to be in this Registry.

This is a particularly interesting document of movie history looking at the fact that it was recorded even before the first Olympic Games of the modern era 1896 in Athens. He wasn't there most likely, but here he gets the chance to show everybody 122 years later what he can do with the clubs.This is Dickson's first work after the Monkeyshines trilogy and while he was experimenting right in front of our eyes in that one, he's certainly done a lot of testing that we didn't witness in-between the projects as well. Newark Athlete is clearly improved and quality-wise several leagues above his previous work.

This movie is a very short and simple experimental film fragment made with the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, using 3/4-inch wide film. Guess it sounds more complex than it really was.Basically all it shows is an 'athelete', who to me just seemed to be a random young boy, swinging a couple of Indian Clubs.The movie doesn't have the best visual quality and it seems to end perhaps just a second before it was really supposed to. It doesn't even have a halve swing now but more of a quarter swing. Also judging by the quality I'm not sure of it if this was a good successful experiment from Edison and workers but then again at that time of course all experiments were useful and contributed to the development of future movie making, this one included.6/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

This ultra-short feature is one of a small number of surviving experiments made by the Edison Company in the same year as the well-known "Dickson Greeting" film. As such, it is simple but successful, accomplishing its goal of capturing the motions of its subject while also providing a clear image of him.The footage simply shows one athlete or gymnast who makes a movement with a pair of clubs. The movie succeeds in photographing the subject in some detail, and in capturing the motion smoothly. The motion is equally clear at each of the speeds in the preserved footage. These are simple goals, to be sure, but they are basic foundations of cinema, and they had to be met before the new invention could be used for more complex and interesting movies.In 1894, when the Edison Company was expanding its film production for commercial use in their Kinetoscopes, a similar camera test was done with the newer equipment then in use. That film, "Athlete With Wand", served a similar purpose, and it is of interest in comparison with this one.