Posted on 10/21/2018 11:48:17 AM PDT by NRx
Old sound film of the Atlantic City Boardwalk in New Jersey, USA, taken April 1928. Since the Movietone process started in late 1927, this is some of the earliest sound footage ever made. It has a very unique perspective of the cameraman 'walking' through the boardwalk (maybe mounted to the front of a rickshaw?) The sound is rough and muffled but this is great time travel.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtu.be ...
Go look at what Peter Jackson did with WW1 films.
I’ll suspect soon film like this will be so easily restored and enhanced, that you will think you are looking at something taken last week.
One or more of the little boys mugging for the camera may still be alive today. Look how people dressed for a fun day at the Boardwalk in early spring.
Very neat. Thanks for posting.
I didn’t see a single man, and few boys, without ties on. The women were well dressed, too. Some Flipper girls, too.
Every time I see stuff like this it reminds me that we will never be able to look back longer in our lifetime than what? 170 years in photography, 100 years in film? And even then the quality is pretty crappy. But just think: People in the future, 200, 300 even 1000 years from now will be able to look back at us in HD quality and sound - that’s if liberals don’t get their way and humanity survives. That’s going to be crazy. Can you imagine looking back at the year 1017 looking like it was recorded a second ago? Digital never degrades provided the equipment to store it is still undamaged and around but I would imagine something akin to the internet would still be around, just data all over the place. But you know, I really have doubts civilization will last another 1000 years. Eventually people will give control back the the left and it’s going to turn out to be a fatal mistake. I mean look what the hell went on last administration, we barely escaped Armageddon by Hillary losing.
I was thinking that some of them were probably killed in WWII. Nobody knows what’s going to happen next.
My mothers side of the family are all from South Jersey. Could very well be some of my relatives in that film.
I thought I saw Nucky Thompson!
Great stuff! Too bad the sound quality is so awful — must have been very new / immature technology. They improved very quickly to the Movietone newsreels.
Lots of fascinating things:
* Everybody is looking at the camera rig. Obviously, few had seen anything like that before. I wonder what it looked like.
* Lots of wealth. That changed 18 months later with the stock market crash and depression.
* The sheer number of the man-pushed cabs is amazing. I had no idea those things existed on the boardwalk.
* A few kids mugging for the camera - hand gestures, sticking tongues out. Some things don’t change.
* Everybody is so well dressed. Fur coats. No piercings (except ears). No facial tattoos.
* Some horses on the beach. Looks like one is pulling a sulky.
* The streets are so clean. No litter, no graffiti.
Wiki --> "It wasn't until the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929 that the roaring '20s era of glitz and glamour came to an end, and with it, the flapper dress. Unable to afford the latest trends and lifestyle, the once vibrant flapper women returned to their dropped hemlines. A sudden serious tone washed over the public with the appearance of The Great Depression. Transitioning into the thirties was no easy task. Campaigns such as the "Make do and Mend" slogan were becoming prevalent to ensure there was no overconsumption throughout society. Fabric choices were among the many items to be cut back on during this poverty-stricken time. Artificial fabrics were used instead of elegant fabrics, like silk, which were so popular in the early 1900s. No longer were party dresses adorned with decorative embellishments or made brightly colored. Instead, women headed to work to take over men's roles while they were at war. The physically demanding jobs called for the creation and social acceptance of women's pants in society. Although the era of the flapper had vanished almost overnight, its symbol for women's liberation would live on. No longer would a woman have to be a homemaker. The freedom to choose her role in society was created. Even though many opposed the radical era, one can see how the flapper dress helped bridge a gap between genders in society, ultimately leading in the direction of women's rights.By 1934 the short-haired, short-skirted flapper look had completely disappeared and what we now consider to be typical 1930s fashion had taken over."
Was Nucky carrying his Thompson? Or his violin case?
They were killed 10 years before the film was shot? How does that work?
This is a year before the stock market crash, the start of the Great depression or as the left calls it today “Utopia”.
Oops...you wrote “WW II.” I read it as “WW I.” Forgive my error.
You are no doubt right. Boys born in 1920 would have been 8 in this film, 21 at the start of WW II.
I wish the camera crew had engaged the crowd in conversation.
Wow. look at those rolling shutter effects. What’s old is new again! These days, you see the same diagonal warping in videos shot with inexpensive cell phones. Of course now it’s an electronic version of the old mechanical rolling shutter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_shutter
I look at all those people, even the young children, and think — they are all somewhere today. Did they choose eternal life through Jesus Christ, or were they hoping on their own personal merit. Yes, they are somewhere today . . . either vibrantly more alive than they ever were, or imprisoned by the second death.
“(For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation)” (II Corinthians 6:2).
Oh, and all that read this post, when 110 years have past in your experience . . . you will also be somewhere.
Where?
This is fascinating. The thing that gets me, aside from the other observations made here regarding people’s dress and overall look, is the relative silence. You hear conversations, people milling about, but the absence of the noise of a mechanized city is stark in comparison with today. No music, no screaming advertisement, an homogeneous society going about their business.
Fascinating.
I often view films from this era that are available on Youtube and the comments always express surprise at how well dressed everyone is. This covers film from the very late 1890’s to the 1930’s and ‘40’s.
Obviously, up until fairly recently, men wore ties and jackets as their normal way of dressing and women usually wore dresses and skirts as their normal attire. For the time, they were not ‘dressed up’ at all.
Of course styles change and have drastically in the last 40 years or so. The attire of the folks in the Atlantic City film certainly look better than the sloppy dress of today.
Still, although I would love to time travel to 1928, I know I wouldn’t much like the lack of the conveniences we take for granted, today. The fact that the Great Depression as well as World War II loomed for the people in the film work to give one a ‘God’s eye’ view, as it were.
Wearing hats did not go out of fashion until much later. I remember asking my mother when I was about 5 years old what caused men to become bald and she told me it was from wearing hats. That was when Eisenhower was President. Maybe JFK killed the fashion of wearing hats.
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