Masterful Movie

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This short film is not at all convincing by today's standards. It is only 15 seconds long and...yeah, I think you know what to expect. Edison's filmmaking business was still in its infancy when they made this, although it is a step up from what they were originally doing. Instead of an athlete or dancer performing for the camera, here's a historical reenactment on film with actors, costumes and props. Wow.What puzzles me about this film though is that it contains, supposedly, the VERY FIRST EDIT EVER IN FILM HISTORY (but believe me, the edit itself is very easy to spot which takes away the horror element. It's obvious they substituted the actress with a dummy). Way to go, Edison. But isn't there a rumor out there that it was Georges Méliès who invented the film edit? For a while I had the impression that it WAS him (due to a myth about the camera getting crammed while the director was filming a street scene) until I saw this finally. Like I said, the edit is very poor, and Melies would do editing seamlessly in the following years, but it is nonetheless important.And so,"The Execution of Mary Stuart" thus marks not one, but three new things: the first edit, the first film reenactment, and the first horror movie ever filmed! A must-see despite the depressing and horrid nature of the film.

This is a reenactment of the execution of Queen Mary. This clip was filmed in Edison's studio on August 28, 1895. Mary is brought to the execution block and made to kneel down with her neck over it. The executioner lifts his axe ready to bring it down. After that frame Mary has been replaced by a dummy. The axe comes down and severs the head of the dummy from the body. The executioner picks up the head and shows it around for everyone else to see. One of the first 'camera tricks' to be used in a movie. It shocked audiences in its day, but for obvious reasons it today looks quite fake. This is also one of the first if not the first film reproducing a historical scene going for the best possible realism, a description that later became a definition for a genre. This was the first film in history to use trained actors.

I would consider "The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots" to be one of the earliest exploitational films. It has very little merit or substance and was made simply to shock audiences--and according to IMDb, it did! The film is only about 15-20 seconds long! It consists of a lady laying her head on the chopping block and the executioner hacking her head off and showing it to the onlookers. However, it isn't at all historically accurate--as they did not use an axe but a French Sword for such executions and it would have been done on the grounds of the Tower of London and there would have been a scaffold. Additionally, it took a couple swings to mostly sever her head and the remaining sinew needed to be cut with a sharp knife!! In the film, there was just a quick swing of the blade.So, what we have is a mostly historically inaccurate production. In some ways, being inaccurate was better as the real execution was a bloody mess! But it's interesting simply to see what passed as entertainment in the very early days of cinema.

Even if Alfred Clark did not make movies before and after the year 1895, this is possibly one of the most spectacular short films from the 19th century. It combines quite a few genres in it. Drama, horror, gore and it's even historically significant. In no more than 15 seconds running time we see the beheading of the Queen of Scots depicted brutally real. The way her body sinks to the ground is mesmerizing yet painful to watch. After it's all over and life has flown out of her body, the executioner takes the head and holds it up to the crows to show demonstratively to the crowd that the Queen is dead. The audience in the background looked as baffled as I did during this short film and it's probably worth a watch for silent film enthusiasts, not for the easily offended though.