The very first actor to perform an on-screen death
In the vast history of cinema, death scenes have played a pivotal role in shaping the narrative of countless movies. From Don Corleone’s quiet and gentle death in the orange garden at the end of The Godfather to the elaborate and sickening murder traps in the Saw franchise, audiences can take their pick with watching people die on screen. However, tracing back to the earliest recorded instance of a death scene in film takes us to a fascinating point in cinematic history.
It’s widely believed that the first death scene was recorded by famous inventor Thomas Edison’s production company. Filmed between May 10th and 19th in 1895, this theatrical performance was a recreation of an episode from the 1894 novel Trilby by George du Maurier. While it’s believed that David Henderson may have played the character of Svengali, the details surrounding this early period of film history are not concrete.
According to The Picture Show Man, a resource dedicated to our earliest cinematic endeavours, the 50-foot film was designed to be shown in Edison’s Kinetoscope: a pioneering piece of equipment that was an early forerunner to the modern film projector. But because the specifics of this death scene and the actors involved remain somewhat ambiguous, it doesn’t hold the title of the first death scene featuring a credited actor.
That distinction goes to Robert Thomae in the film The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots, a dramatic re-enactment of the historical event of Mary Stuart’s execution. Thomae played the ill-fated queen, and the film took an ingeniously realistic approach to depict her decapitation. Revolutionary for its time, the scene is believed to have employed an early form of stop-motion animation, replacing Thomae with a dummy for the actual beheading scene, which results in a shocking portrayal that is genuinely believable to this day.
Released in 1895, The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots stood as a testament to the potential of cinematic art, pushing the boundaries of what was considered possible. Today, the film is preserved in the Library of Congress, serving as an essential reminder of the early stages of filmmaking and its inherent drive to innovate, captivate and ultimately engage audiences.
These groundbreaking and early tests of filmmaking marked a turning point in our history, exhibiting the possibilities of storytelling in cinema and paving the way for advancements in special effects and cinematography that continue to shape the industry today.
Watching early clips like these, which the Library of Congress thankfully has a whole archive of, a profound sense of pride is evoked. As a modern audience member, one can’t help but marvel – not just at how far we’ve come but at what we were accomplishing so early on, too.
