Girls Taking Time Checks (1904)
Almost 200 women file by a device on the wall from which they take their time checks. A man runs half-way across the screen at the end of the film.
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Such a frustrating disappointment
A Major Disappointment
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.
Girls Taking Time Checks (1904) During the early 1900's Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company made a number of industrial films that allowed the public to see what went on inside their buildings. Needless to say, these films didn't contain any sort of plot but some might find them interesting.If you've stumbled across any of my reviews for this series then you'll probably read the exact same thing in each of them. The film starts off well enough as we see a line of women clocking in as they begin (or end) work. The only problem is that we see the exact same thing for over three minutes, which gets very boring after a while since we're just seeing the same thing over and over again. Had this simply lasted a minute like those films from the 1890s then it would have been much more entertaining but we pretty much see every worker go through the line.
One after another, woman after woman walks briskly but calmly by the stand where her time card is stored and takes it. There seems to be hundreds of them as this goes on for three minutes. When the last is gone, a man rushes in.This is one of the series of industrial films shot by Billy Bitzer at the Westinghouse plant in Pittsburgh. As you might expect from Bitzer, it is well composed and the movement is decent, but it's not particularly brilliant, despite the capper joke. It does illustrate, as do almost all the shorts in this series, the amazing industrial might that was building up in Pittsburgh, but except for the nascent feminist slant, showing these women as capable of making their own living and the laziness of men -- it is of only historical interest.