From 1903 to 1911, the glamorous annual revue at the Metropol-Theater was the highlight of Berlin’s entertainment scene. In 1904 its title exulted Ein tolles Jahr! (A Fabulous Year!), which fits our programme perfectly – a revue of fantastic films from 1904. Early cinema adopted the variety programme concept and the exceptional quality of this cinema lies in the wide range of aesthetic impacts and emotional reactions spectators experience watching, one after the other, the ten or more short films in each screening.
Moved and touched, we empathise with real or fictional characters; with astonishment we follow the irresistible timing of clowns; we are shocked when the balloon turns red and burns all of a sudden, and are delighted by the sublime vision of ships on the horizon or patterns created by rhythmically swaying pompoms. How amusing (and gross) when the telephone booth is mistaken for the toilet! (In his aesthetics of performing arts Abhinavagupta [950-1020 C.E.] suggests nine categories of reactions [bhava], based on nine basic emotions [rasa]: Delight, Laughter, Sorrow, Anger, Heroism, Fear, Disgust, Wonder and Serenity, providing an excellent access to early cinema.)
In selecting and arranging the films, we paid attention to other special delights of 1904 cinema, such as switching between colour and black-and-white, and the diversity of spatial arrangements. We proudly present a number from the original Metropol revue: comedian Henry Bender as Baby Emil. The recording on disc of his husky voice is lost, but we have found the text (by Julius Freund) and music (by Victor Holländer, father of Friedrich Holländer, of The Blue Angel) and now only need a singer, stocky and hoarse.

Mariann Lewinsky