Edison: The Wizard of Light--DVD
from Devine Entertainment
1893 Menlo Park, New Jersey...Thomas Edison - the world’s greatest Inventor - is alone in his lab, obsessed by a vision: "What if I could do for the eye what my favorite invention, the phonograph, does for the ear?"
Edison’s prototype, the "Kinetoscope", is destroyed by Jack - a scruffy twelve year-old desperately fleeing an angry truant officer - when he crashes into the Edison’s lab. Edison’s first inclination is to throw the brat back to the wolves, but, because he recognizes something of himself in the boy, he covers for Jack and takes him in. Jack becomes a kind of "Sorcerer’s Apprentice" to Edison, sharing the adventure, the late hours and the unrelenting energy of the Wizard of Menlo Park, as they pursue the dream of the motion picture.
Story Synopsis of Edison:
The Wizard of Light
It is 1931. In the office of his New York apartment, which is crammed with movie memorabilia, a 46-year-old film director named Jack Maloney has been up all night editing and splicing film. Sometime before dawn, his wife Kate wakes and joins him. They kibbitz and bicker good-naturedly, and at last he rolls the film. It is the story of his life, and we follow his zoom into the past. Periodically, we will return to 1931 to watch Jack and Kate discuss what theyre watching, and its importance to Jack and his wife.
As Jack’s film begins, it is 1893. Jack is a 10-year-old boy, on the lam from an orphanage. On a street in West Orange, N.J., he steals a bundle of newspapers, scurries around the corner and tries to sell them. With a bit of clever salesmanship, the papers start to move--but not for long. The orphanage director has tracked him down. Jack flees, with the police, the newspaper delivery man and the director hot on his heels. Jack bursts through a warehouse door, only to find himself in an astonishing workshop. He hides, not knowing where he is. He can see three men–Edward Muybridge, William Dickson and Thomas Edison--who are about to participate in a demonstration. Muybridge shows off his zoopraxiscope. As the men discuss what they’ve seen, Jacks pursuers burst in and collar him. Edison instinctively sides with Jack against the forces of authority. He pays off the newspaperman and saves Jack from a life in the orphanage by taking him on as an apprentice.
That night, Jack is startled by one of Edison’s inventions and seeks to escape. The inventor intercepts him and gives him a guided tour. This may be the first time an adult has spent "quality time" with the boy, and Jack begrudgingly feels himself being won over. Certainly, the gadgets seem like magic! In fact, Jack is instinctively more captivated by Muybridge’s primitive projection device than Edison is, and together he and Dickson convince the great man to give serious thought to its development.
Months of hard work–and the occasional bit of luck–result in the kinetoscope, and Jack witnesses the dawn of the era of motion pictures. In a primitive studio–the now famous Black Maria–Edison shoots the first short films, but though he constantly improves his technology, Jack thinks he has a problem: the films are boring. He suggests they film a boxing match, and Edison, always willing to run with a better idea, agrees. Their film is the medium’s first blockbuster and they’re the toast of the town for a while, until new European technology steals their thunder. Jack suggests the next vital step: filming stories that have a dramatic hook.
All the while, Edison’s workaholic perfectionism has been at the expense of his family. One night, he tears himself away from the laboratory for his son’s birthday. Jack later notices that Edison has forgotten his glasses and decides to take them to him. At Glenmont, the Edison mansion, Jack blurts out his wistfulness at not having a family. Gently, Edison encourages him to appreciate his freedom--freedom from responsibility, freedom to think, freedom to work hard at making the world a better place.
It is now 1925. Jack is 38 and Dickson 58. At 78, Edison has soured on the motion-picture business, having lost some key patent fights in court. Ever the inventor, he want to move on, and right now his phonograph looks like it has potential. Despite Jack’s and Dickson’s protests, he shuts down his film operation. Jack refuses to quit. He wants to make movies and tries to convince Dickson to leave and work with him. Edison overhears them and accuses them of disloyalty. Dickson leaves. Edison pulls a father-son ploy on Jack, but Jack isn’t buying it. After all, he says to the man who put his work ahead of everything, what do you know about fathers and sons?
Soon Jack is running his own show--Maloney Studios--but making good movies is proving harder than he imagined. Kate Cruthers, a young actress cast as the Damsel in Distress in one of his films, isn’t happy either. Yet Jack seems more caught up with being the director than with what it is he’s supposed to be directing, and the last straw is when he calls her "baby." She doesn’t care who he is--she swats him with a broom. Just as Jack is looking at this feisty woman in a new light, Edison arrives for a look-see at his former protege’s business. Ever the curmudgeon, he chides Jack for wasting his talent by producing simple-minded pap. Jack boasts about his commercial success. Kate sides with Edison.
Jack and Kate continue to work together--and start dating. They both love movies but seldom agree when they discuss them. Kate encourages Jack to make a movie that speaks to the heart; if he does so, the money will take care of itself. Jack goes for a contemplative drive, ending up at Edison’s laboratory. As always, work there continues, but he cajoles the old man into taking a ride with him. They finally have a father-and-son chat that is heartfelt for them both. Jack drives Edison home to his family.
Back to 1931, the year of Edison’s death. Jack’s film concludes on this note. He is eager to hear Kate’s opinion, although he knows enough to brace himself. Her hug pretty much says it all.
Life And Times of
Thomas A. Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, on Feb. 11, 1847. The seventh and last child of lumber dealer Sam Edison and wife Nancy, a former school teacher, he was born with a head so disporportionately large that there were fears he might be "defective." When the family moved to Michigan and Edison turned seven, he was enrolled in school, where he revived his parents concerns by withdrawing into an alarming shell. After three months, they withdrew him–and that was the extent of Thomas Edison’s formal education; thereafter, Nancy taught him at home. He promptly did an about-face, showing unending curiosity about life and how it worked. (For a while, his chemistry set was his best friend.) Unfortunately, Sam’s business was often precarious; when it took a serious downturn, Edison left home to become a candy seller on the train between Port Huron and Detroit. He was only 12 years old.
As the nominal head of the Edison General Electric Company, Edison could easily have rested on his laurels. He chose instead to move to West Orange and continue his inventive research. It was there that he became seized with the potential of the primitive zoopraxiscope, and in short order had come up with the kinetoscope, by which the era of motion pictures was born. In 1913, he was the first to demonstrate synchronized pictures and sound. These accomplishments are central to the Devine Entertainment film Edison: The Wizard of Light.
6 DVD Set, $89.98
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