Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white silent clip from a 1914 home movie of a wedding shows the wedding party assembled for a formal photograph in a family home. Pageboys, bridesmaids and the couple have been arranged in a group pose for the photographer. Their informal chatter and movements cease while the photograph is taken and then resume afterwards. Footage reveals guests, including an elderly couple, looking on while the married couple poses for the cameras. All are formally dressed and appear prosperous.

Educational value points

• This clip makes it clear that the unsmiling formality seen in portrait photography of the time was a matter of convention, not a realistic depiction of people as they were. The party’s relaxed and animated behaviour before and after the photograph contrasts with the subdued expressions while being photographed, which may reflect respect for the significance of the occasion or merely a practice from the past, when long exposure times had been necessary.

• The wedding party is seen following a tradition begun in the 1840s when photography was adopted as a means of creating permanent family records, of which wedding photographs continue to be one of the most important. Wedding parties were usually photographed in the photographer’s studio where they posed before a painted backdrop. Bringing the photographer to the home may be seen as an indication of wealth.

• Most of the guests seen in this clip are wearing Edwardian-era fashions. The women in the wedding party and among the guests are wearing ankle-length skirts. The new Empire silhouette style is shown in the bride’s dress. The men are wearing formal three-piece morning suits (‘tails’), many with older-style upturned collars.

• Home movies made at the time of this clip are exceptionally rare so this clip provides a valuable insight into the past. Few families could afford the expensive equipment at a time when movie making itself was still in its infancy. The movie camera used in this sequence would have been hand-cranked and cumbersome. Another reason for the rarity of such footage is that the nitrate film used was unstable and highly flammable so much early film has been lost.

• The clip provides documentary evidence of some of the customs of wealthy urban Australians in 1914. The photographs are being taken in what appears to be a substantial family home with guests who may be there for the ‘wedding breakfast’, an English custom in which the bride and groom fast before the wedding so that the meal at the reception celebrated the breaking of their fast.