G. Sacco Albanese

Actor | United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

A silent shadow flicking to a beam of light – this is perhaps the best way to describe the person that was Giuseppe Sacco Albanese, the man that could be the first actor in American cinema.

William K.L. Dickson’s and William Heise’s first successful experiment in shooting a moving image, Monkeyshines, No. 1 (1890), shows a ghostly figure moving in the dark, a body that is barely distinguishable making tiny perceptible motions. The printed film images can scarcely give us an indication that behind that ghost hides a real human being, a man with a history, a man with a face.

It is primarily this visual obscurity that still has historians fighting over who is the real person in the image. Many would maintain it is John Ott – an employee, but also a good friend of Thomas Edison, that was to appear later on in Blacksmith Scene (1893). This claim would give Dickson nearly a year gap between his first cylindrical experiments and his first celluloid film, Dickson Greeting (1891), which feels slightly improbable given Edison’s ambition to become the man that stood behind the invention of the movies. A more appealing suggestion is that the experiment took place around November 1890 and the person in the shot is another Edison employee – a young immigrant from Malta, mainly identified as G. Sacco Albanese (based on the employment records, as well as the immigration landing card information).

Very little is known of Albanese. Except the employment records, he is rarely mentioned amongst Edison’s employees. The appearance in the Monkeyshines films seems to be the only point of reference of his contribution to the world of cinema, in spite of the number of off-hand suggestions that assign him a more involved role in Edison’s laboratory. Arguably, his involvement in building tramlines in Nice, and (unsuccessfully) in Malta appear to be his more important credits in his technological career.

Looking back at the early stages of film-making, the ambiguity over who is the first person to take up a persona in front of a motion picture camera (the Kinetoscope, in this case) does highlight the fact that the medium had rather rudimentary roots. Film did not emerge as an art form in the mind of the inventors; it was more “its ability to immortalize our fleeting but beloved associations” that was seen as its paramount power, as William K.L. Dickson and Antonia Dickson muse in the History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope and Kinetophonograph (1). Thus, the role of an actor became less about impersonation, but more about being oneself.

Albanese, in effect, did become the first screen actor, as he put the necessity of being in front of the camera above the actions that were scripted for him. The character he assumes is ordinary, unspectacular, trivial in his attitude. Yet, it is precisely those characteristics that moved film away from traditional staging. The potential for entertainment to see an ordinary action performed by a fellow human being seems in retrospect rather radical for the time. However, the quiet, naïve, but bold entrance of cinema into our world made it look as if there was nothing out of the ordinary in all that.

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(1) Dickson, Antonia & Dickson, William K.L. History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope and Kinetophonograph. New York: Albert Dunn, Imprimatur, 1895.

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Essential Films Filmography Rankings

Film:

1. Monkeyshines, No. 1 (1890)

Actor:

1. Monkeyshines, No. 1 (1890)

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Links: IMDb - Wikipedia