1. Screening
     Content  

2. Directorship

3. Modern critical views

4. Notes

5. References

Un célebre especialista sacando muelas en el gran Hotel Europa (English: A celebrated specialist pulling teeth at the grand Hotel Europa) is an 1897 Venezuelan short film, and the first Venezuelan film ever produced. It was screened at the Baralt Theatre in Maracaibo on 28 January 1897.

The film shows a surgeon, displaying at the Hotel Europa in Maracaibo, as he pulls teeth from a man. Film scholarship questions the identity of its director, as well as its place within Latin American film history.

Screening

Unfortunately, the screening did perhaps not go very well, as reports also suggest that the public reception was both cautiously intrigued at moving images, but also indifferent to the overall prospect.^[8] A contemporary review, in El Cronista, noted that the films seemed well-shot, but that the actual screening was not well executed, saying that the running of the tapes was initially irregular and the lighting of the theatre was too bright for showing films, making it hard to see images.^[7]:28[8]

Content

The film shows, as suggested by its name, a "celebrated" surgeon pulling teeth from a patient inside the Hotel Europa in Maracaibo. The story was described by film historian Ana López as "a somewhat precarious dental extraction".^[11] Jesús Ricardo Azuaga García writes that the film was stylistically similar to Lumiere films, possibly emulating them, in that it showed "one of those more or less everyday activities that the French film pioneers used to show in their films",^[7]:29 which he later notes is highly irregular for Venezuelan film, listing only three instances.^[7]:37 No copies of the film were preserved, but for the 120th anniversary of the premiere in January 2017, the Venezuelan Association of Film Exhibitors produced some reconstructed film of both Un celebre especialista... and Muchachos banandose.... The group collected frames stored in the Zulia Photographic Archive from the 1890s, restoring and colorizing images to recreate what the films approximately looked like. Emiliano Faría directed and Abdel Güerere wrote and produced the effort.^[9]

Directorship

The film is widely stated to be made by Manuel Trujillo Durán, a view which persists even after it was determined that the film pioneer did not bring the Vitascope to Venezuela.^[10]:47 Though, sources do suggest that it was either Trujillo, or Trujillo and his brother Guillermo, who made the early films.^[11][17] Debate rages on, with film scholarship in the nation suggesting both that Trujillo as director could be very unlikely or very likely. As support, the former has evidence that Trujillo probably didn't have a motion picture camera to make the film on, and was in Táchira at the time,^[10]:54 the latter relies on Trujillo's proximity to film at its inception in Venezuela and his relationship with American camera companies to rebut them.^[19] Even Rodolfo Izaguirre, veteran Venezuelan film critic and inveterate supporter of Trujillo, says that the films are only "presumed" to be made by Trujillo,^[4] with Venezuelan film histories that support Trujillo announcing that "it is said" he was the pioneer.^[12]

Modern critical views

The historian López says that the film "may be the earliest views shot in Latin America", suggesting this was not only the first Venezuelan but first Latin American film,^[11] but Evangelina Soltero Sánchez posits earlier dates for films produced elsewhere in South America.^[13]

In his book, Paul A. Schroeder Rodríguez describes early Latin American film in general as reflective of "the air of self-sufficiency of the early pioneers, as if they were looking at themselves and liked what they saw", singling out Un célebre especialista... as an example that easily demonstrates this, "speak[ing] for [itself]".^[14] Stephen M. Hart gives an insight into the potentially cold welcome awarded the film in his book, saying that whilst it fit the mold of the actualité — a film like a short news report on events — audiences were quickly numbed by seeing many of these in succession and began "craving more interesting material than [...] a dentist's antics".^[15]

One writer, Michelle Leigh Farrell, discusses the cinema of Venezuela over a century and its lack of presence and marginal influence on the continent, despite its history in having Un célebre especialista... as one of the first Latin American films. Farrell believes that this frontrunner success was an influence in the Venezuelan government interceding to capitalise on early film, instead monopolising the industry with poorly-managed production companies.^[16] However, Michael Chanan suggests that Venezuela was typical of Latin American nations, many of which did not follow early films with continued production. Though, Chanan does also use a case study to show how some early documentaries were missing for many decades, and so there may be a rich hidden history.^[17]

In discussion of The House at the End of Time as the first Venezuelan terror film, Robert Gómez instead suggested that Un célebre especialista... may actually hold this position, saying that "it's not for no reason that the figure of the dentist exists in lots of B-movies and art films as the character that uses his office to torture victims. Think Marathon Man." Gómez added that though the director, with the limitations of the time, was not aiming for a genre film, "one can not ignore the reaction of the spectator, who probably saw in it, as is natural, a terrifying story in the same way that many spectators reacted to the 'Arrival of the train to the station' by the Lumière brothers".^[18]

Notes

References

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