Shooting Captured Insurgents (1898) User Reviews (9)

A somewhat interesting re-enactment.

[BrettErikJohnson · 4/10 · 19 October 2005]

Of course, it would've been dangerous and extremely difficult to film actual events during the Spanish-American War. So the Edison Manufacturing Company did the next best thing by re-enacting an event for this short.

Even though it wasn't "real", I can only imagine how disturbing it would have been back in 1898 to see people being lined up and killed. Due to its gritty, documentary-like feel, it is still somewhat unsettling to view even today. This short has been preserved by the Library of Congress and I viewed it as one of the unadvertised bonus shorts found in the DVD boxed set of "The Movies Begin - A Treasury of Early Cinema, 1894-1913".

A snuff film if there ever was one

[cricket30 · 4/10 · 14 February 2013]

You may remember from my review of the 1896 Edison offering, LONE FISHERMAN, that I found compelling evidence establishing that allegedly fictional offering as film history's first snuff pic. Edison, the guy who filmed Dumbo being electrocuted on purpose--complete with flames shooting out of the chained pachyderm's feet--in order to win the contract for Osing-Osing's death chair, and who hung out with future Nazi enablers such as Henry Ford, always had a nose for the sick, macabre, and the quintessentially American. What could be more red-white-and-blue than marching four poor souls with their wrists tied into a courtyard, making them face the wall, and having some bozo with a drawn sword race around till ordering a quartet of riflemen to put bullets into the backs of heads four feet in from of them? (Edison probably gave Insurgent #2 from the left highest marks for his death flop, what with the leg kick and all). In its day, this short would cause only the richest of taxpayers to puke up their poached eggs over the waste of the price of four bullets (but Ford's buddy Adolph would get much more bang for his killing jar buck a few decades later, thanks to Edison docs such as SHOOTING CAPTURED INSURGENTS).

Interesting Early Example Of How Movies Can Blur the Line Between Reality & Illusion

[Snow Leopard · 2 November 2005]

This staged war feature - grim and a bit unsettling in itself - is an interesting early example of the power that movies have to blur the line between reality and illusion. It was based on reports of similar factual events, but the movie itself was staged. It looks quite realistic, though, especially by the standards of its day, and it would not have been surprising if its original audiences interpreted it as a factual record.

The footage depicts a stylishly dressed Spanish officer leading a firing squad in the execution of a small group of Cuban freedom fighters. There seems to be little doubt that it was intended to influence public opinion in favor of the war against Spain, and as such it would have been one of many such efforts from the press and other influential institutions of the day.

Many history books record the efforts at the time of the Hearst press and others in support of war, but moving picture footage like this - even if it is only a fictional recreation - is much more likely to be seen by future generations, in addition to whatever influence it may have had in its own time.

Another military reenactment

[Horst_In_Translation · 2/10 · 13 October 2013]

And probably one of the most brutal films from the 19th century, but also one of the most realistic I guess. We see a couple of soldiers who lead a group of hostages that were taken into captivity earlier on (when the film wasn't running yet). The dramatic highlight of this under 30-second short film is when the arrested are ordered to line up against a wall, with their backs showing into the direction of their captors. Consequently they are executed in cold blood. It depicts the violence and cruelty very accurately, from a time when combat and war was much more present than it is today, thankfully. Not really one I'd be interested to watch again. You'd have to be a bit of a sadist for that.

Shooting Captured Insurgents review

[JoeytheBrit · 7/10 · 22 April 2020]

Convincing re-enactment of the shooting of Spanish insurgents by Cuban soldiers which looks surprisingly realistic. No doubt many of the film's original audience would have been fooled into believing it was genuine footage.

Hard to rate...but incredibly sick!

[planktonrules · 10 February 2019]

I assume that when this incredibly short film was made that it was passed off as actual footage of Spanish atrocities in their colonies. Perhaps they admitted it was a re-creation, though I doubt it as many times studios pretended to show real events (such as the execution of McKinley's assassin which was faked and passed off as real). The bottom line is that films like this helped propel the US into a war with Spain and the film footage either was used to drum up support for the war OR excuse the war after the fact....it's hard to tell since it came out in 1898 and the war was over and done with that same year. Regardless, it had its intended purpose...sleazy as it was.

Dramatic but not much to look at

[Tornado_Sam · 1 June 2017]

This print is featured as an unadvertised bonus to Kino's magnificent collection "The Movies Begin: A Treasury of Early Cinema" in the second volume, namely "The European Pioneers." The reason they call this an unadvertised bonus is because the print survives in a most blurry condition, thus it is below Kino's standard quality.

Apparently this film is a reenactment of an event in the Spanish-American war. There is not much here. A group of soldiers line up some other soldiers against a wall. The commanding officer signals and the soldiers shoot at the ones lined up against the wall. As the smoke clears the soldiers are seen falling to the ground. That's practically it.

A dramatic picture, shocking for 1898. But it has good historical value and must have been a great achievement. Of course it is not a real event, but looks pretty believable even today.

(Note: I plan to review all of the unadvertised bonuses at some time. This is the fourth I've reviewed. The others are "Girls Swinging" (1897) "The Interrupted Bathers" and "The Draped Model" (both 1902).

Shooting Captured Insurgents

[Michael_Elliott · 8 December 2016]

Shooting Captured Insurgents (1898)

This here is a rather violent, for its time, film that shows some Spanish soldiers being lined up against a wall and shot dead.

From what I've gathered this here isn't real footage of an execution, although there are some of these movies out there. It seems this one here was staged just to tell a story or give people the idea that they were watching the "bad guy" being executed. You have to wonder what people in 1898 would have thought about material like this and I can only imagine that it probably met with some controversy or at least some outrage by certain folks.

Shooting Captured Insurgents may or may not have been Edwin S. Porter's first film

[tavm · 3 December 2021]

The only reason I'm reviewing this particular film now is because-according to this site-it's the first one partly directed by one Edwin S. Porter who would go on to helm more story-oriented shorts like the famous The Great Train Robbery. But he's not IDed as such on Wikipedia so this will not be my first in a series of reviews that I'm calling Early Works of Film Directors. Anyway, it depicts an execution by firing squad of a group of soldiers who, I guess, were betrayers of their country. That's it. If this was really a recreation and not an actual depiction of a real-life event, then it was certainly convincing enough to me as I'm sure it was to the original viewers when this was possibly viewed on what was known at the time as a kinetoscope. I saw this on YouTube...