Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Wordiezett So much average

Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

gavin6942 Two people kiss, and this was one of the first films ever shown commercially to the public. The film is around 18 seconds long, and depicts a re-enactment of the kiss between May Irwin and John Rice from the final scene of the stage musical, "The Widow Jones".The kissing scene was denounced as shocking and obscene to early moviegoers and caused the Roman Catholic Church to call for censorship and moral reform - because kissing in public at the time could lead to prosecution. As shocking as this seems today (2016), it is quite true.What is most interesting about this short film, I feel, is that the couple is clearly speaking to each other. Maybe there are lines in the original play. I have no idea. But I am not a lip reader and I cannot make out what is being said... indeed, it is a mystery, and adds a little something to this otherwise (in my opinion) tame picture.

cricket crockett . . . if youv ever been in a sports stadium with "kiss cam," I'm sure youv seen worse. Pablo says to give it 8 of 10 since it's the first porno flick ever. I find it hard to believe this caused a "scandal" in 1896, if it was merely putting a scene from a publicly performed play into a kinetograph peep booth. I mean, those Suffragette temperance women must have seen French post cards and stereopticoron "3D" nude pix, mussent they uv? For gosh sakes, these senior citizens are fully dressed in some sort of formal wear! At any rate, what I wonder is why there are none of the old-timey title cards explaining what the geezer says to the old bag, or what she says back to him. I mean, there's about 14 seconds of jibber-jabbering and one second of kissing, so what the heck is all the talk about??

love_platipus Hearing what a scandal this caused, you have to wonder what the 1890-oids would think of what goes into movies today. But considering its only about 10 seconds long, you really have got to see this movie. Its a historical landmark. First romance ever filmed people, are you really going to miss that?? Imagine if kissing on screen was still a social taboo? Imagine every romance movie ever made ( Casablanca, Titanic, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Romeo and Juliet, etc. ) minus any physical affection whatsoever. it would be a lot more weird and a lot less fun. Think of what we owe to this film. I think we kind of owe these guys aprox. 10 seconds of our time.

Spent Bullets In 1896 the Edison Company purchased the rights to a motion picture projector that had been invented by C. Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. The projector was renamed the Vitascope and had its commercial debut on April 23, 1896. During its first year the most popular film shown using the Edison vitascope was the May Irwin Kiss.May Irwin who was a Canadian actor, comedienne and singer. Her first starring role on Broadway came in 1895 in a musical comedy created for her by J.J. McNally, called The Widow Jones. In one key scene at the end of the play, Irwin and her co–star, John C. Rice, kiss each other with something of a flourish. Many were scandalized when they recreated their stage kiss for Edison's camera the following year, and one clergy member denounced the film as "a lyric of the stockyards". Critic Herbert Stone complained, " . . . neither participant is physically attractive and the spectacle of their prolonged pasturing on each other's lips was hard to beat when only life size. Magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over is absolutely disgusting!" Despite, or perhaps because of these derisive reviews, the May Irwin Kiss became the most popular film produced that year by Thomas Edison's film company.