The Big Swallow
About The Big Swallow
A man objects to being photographed and walks toward the lens until his mouth fills the frame. He opens wide and swallows the camera and the cinematographer. He steps back, chews, and grins. James Williamson directed, wrote, and photographed the three-shot comedy. An alternate title is A Photographic Contortion.
Cast & crew
More about The Big Swallow
Wikidata dates the film to 1901, lists the length as 1 minute, and names Williamson as both director and cinematographer. The catalog bills Sam Dalton. Frederick A. Talbot described the trick in his 1912 book Moving Pictures: How They Are Made and Worked.
Themes
Reviews
Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline writes that the man stays more or less in focus until his mouth seems to swallow the lens, and he calls the image as effective in its way as the slashed eye in Un Chien Andalou.
Look
James Williamson photographed it. The man walks into a close view that holds focus until the mouth covers the lens.
Technique
The swallow is a three-shot trick, described in Frederick A. Talbot's Moving Pictures (1912). The middle shot shows the photographer disappearing into a black void.
Preservation
The film survives and is the subject of a BFI Screenonline entry.
Notes
- Michael Brooke, writing for BFI Screenonline, ties the approach to the camera to George Albert Smith's Grandma's Reading Glass and Spiders on a Web, both 1900.
- Brooke argues the second and third shots, a cut to a black void and a return to the man chewing, weaken an ending on a blank screen.
- The catalog names Sam Dalton. The English Wikipedia cast line does not.
- Brooke reads the gag as a joke on passers-by who had started to notice Williamson's actuality camera.
Scenes
- The man's mouth fills the frame and the photographer vanishes into black.
- He steps back into view, chewing, and grins.
Influenced by
- George Albert Smith's Grandma's Reading Glass (1900)
- George Albert Smith's Spiders on a Web (1900)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Big Swallow (1901).ogv)
