European Rest Cure
About European Rest Cure
An old American leaves New York by steamer, gets seasick in a storm, and then stumbles through a European tour. He falls off a wall trying to kiss the Blarney Stone, dances a can-can in Paris, drops into an Alpine crevasse, and is robbed among Italian ruins. In Egypt he falls while climbing a pyramid at Giza, and in Germany he is worked over in a mud bath. He comes home too tired to walk alone. Edwin S. Porter directed.
Cast & crew
More about European Rest Cure
Wikipedia says it was partly filmed on location in New York, with stage sets for the foreign stops, in 12 shots. Joseph Hart is the player named on Wikidata. The length there is 17 minutes, the year is 1904, and no company is listed.
Themes
Look
Porter staged most of the foreign stops on sets and used New York for the departure. The storm scene rocks the camera inside the cabin.
Technique
Twelve shots, nearly every one headed by an intertitle, alternate shipboard pans with studio stops for Ireland, Paris, the Alps, Italy, Egypt, and Germany.
Notes
- The Egypt sequence is treated, on the English page, as part of the European tour.
- One New York shot pans with a departing ship so the waving crowd seems to move.
- The cabin scene uses an oscillating camera and water through a porthole for the storm.
- The Blarney Stone is a stage wall, not an Irish location.
Scenes
- The tourist leans over a stage wall to kiss the Blarney Stone and falls.
- He returns home unable to walk without help.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The European Rest Cure (1904).webm)
