Best Documentary Movies of 1906

Footage shot not long after the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco is edited together so that more than one scene and more than one vantage are included. We see fire raging. We see burned-out buildings, piles of rubble, and buildings with only one wall standing. People stand and watch; others walk purposely through the debris. A carriage passes; the camera pans the desolation. A horse-drawn cart is laden with a family's remaining possessions. A sign hangs outside one building: "A little disfigured but still in business. Men Wanted."

A look at typical activities taking place in the Peek Frean factory: First, the workers get up steam, as supplies of milk and flour arrive. Sheets of dough are rolled, then cut, shaped, and readied for baking. The camera then continues to show further events throughout the work day.

It's common knowledge that Scotsmen are macho enough to pull off wearing a skirt - perhaps it's all that caber-tossing. This disarmingly simple film concentrates on the tartan cloths of various clans rather than the men who wore them, and is an early filmic reminder of their huge importance to both Scottish national identity and the thriving tourist industry north of the border. The film's unique selling point was that pioneering filmmaker G. A. Smith showed off the vibrant designs in Kinemacolor, among the earliest colour film processes that didn't involve meticulous hand-painting. And no dangly bits in sight.

In the beginning of the film, a streetcar passes in front of the camera position. The camera starts to move, indicating that it was on a streetcar since it is in the same position as the car in the first scene. All the film was photographed from the streetcar.

A troop of soldiers on horseback enter San Francisco with relief supplies following the earthquake that year.

Riders at a cavalry school take the horses through their paces, jumping over fences and walls, descending steep slopes, and fording streams. Some horses balk, and riders occasionally fall off their steeds.

The documentary features the oldest footage ever taken of surfing, and it was shot in Hawaii by Robert Bonine.

Views and pans among the ruins of San Francisco after the earthquake and fire.

Despite the lurid title, no one gets shot in this long actuality from Lubin. Instead, it's another panorama, as indicated in the movie's alternative title, of the devastation wrought on San Francisco by the Earthquake and subsequent fire.

This Lubin actuality of the aftermath of the San Francisco Earthquake begins with a group of men, pans to the left, and the people vanish, leaving only the shattered landscape.

After the San Francisco Earthquake knocked the city out, and the fires did more damage, many of the refugees from the devastated area settled in a tent city in Jefferson Square. Here are some images from that site.

A bunch of people traveling by foot or on horseback past the camera in Hawaii.

A camera starts on a sloppy scene: people walking around, a building that's seen better days, palm trees, with fronds waving in the breeze. As the camera pans to the left, the busy people continue, but the audience sees the devastation left by the San Francisco Earthquake.

There are a lot of circular pans in this very long (for 1906) travelogue showing the waterfroot of Lucerne, followed by a long moving shot (taken from a boat, since the image rocks) to oe of the resorts on the lake. It's a portrait of a very prosperous bit of city and countryside.

A slave dealer exhibits his wares to a wealthy guy in a turban.... and by that I mean he is showing off women by stripping their clothes from them.

This movie chronicling the visit of Frederick VIII to the city of Aarhus.

A huge throng of spectators watches a car race.

t's one of those pageants from history, in which Roman centurions fight caveman with halberds, Queen Elizabeth arrives in a carriage, and another queen gets her head chopped off while maidens in long, white gowns and crowns of daisies dance o'er the greensward. It looks, in short, like a Society for Creative Anachronism event, with someone footing the bill so all the Tower Warders' uniforms look the same.

The subject is two grotesque-looking human beings who are sitting on the deck of a ship. The two weird individuals sit cross-legged and do the bidding of a man in oriental costume. The point of the film seems to be directed at the fact that the bone structure of the two subjects makes them look like monkeys or apes, and the spectators seem to be trying to get them to behave like monkeys, that is, scratch themselves, etc.

An early silent showing the Arlberg Railway

The title reads "Hailing Drags". You'd expect some sort of travois affair, but it turns out to be mules hailing sugar cane loaded onto wheeled flats. Considered the ground they are on is very rough, it helps.

A bunch of men on horseback gallop past people near a shack in this short shot by Robert K.Bonine.

There's no harbor, and the ship lies some distance off shore..... then the camera pans and a tender has to be sent out amidst the rough water.

The ramshackle-looking train on the single-track line pulls into the station, just in front of the siding. People clumb down and go on their ways.

Shows how they cut the wool off of sheep.

Shepherds in Hawaii push a flock of sheep in line through a trough of water.

A static shot of crowded trams returning people from an unknown sporting event.

A view of Waikiki in 1906.

Lost short film

This one-reel documentary is pretty much what it says in the title. Cavalrymen ride their horses, first over low hedges, then over increasingly rough terrain, until by the end they are sliding down hills to cross a stream and going into caves. The horses don't seem terribly anixous to do these things. Occasionally a rider falls off and the horse walks away, as if to say "See! I told you this wasn't a good idea."

It is a dramatic film, with its colossal explosion and smouldering remains. Within seconds of the chimney's collapse, crowds swarm in to inspect the site; issues of the crowd's health and safety are clearly not a concern, as people smile, wave and salute the camera.