mattlow This is by far the most underrated film of the early film era. The composition and editing is way beyond its time, the acting was beyond words, and the direction was superb. Why it was snubbed at the 1904 Academy Awards, I will never know, perhaps it was a race issue, but I digress. Topsy the elephant's performance is really outstanding, and we would not see a performance of that caliber until Jake Gyllenhall's in Donnie Darko. My final thoughts are that this film is an American triumph of not only film, but artistic expression in general.

Michael_Elliott Electrocuting an Elephant (1903) Edison made thousands of films in his career but this here is perhaps his most notorious. The elephant Topsy was a performer at Luna Park on Coney Island and after killing her third person she was sentenced to death. Edison, being a businessman, wanted to film her electrocution and the end result is this movie lasting under a minute. There's really not too much to be said with this film without entering the debate field. People complain about the violence towards the animal but from everything I've read this is how they were handled back in the day and apparently many places still use this form of death. I think the biggest problem is that Edison would want to film it in order to make money. I can certainly see why people would be offended by this today but apparently those in 1903 were okay with it as apparently this film made quite a bit of money. On a technical level there's certainly nothing impressive about it and today it will just be viewed for a form of exploitation.

mirosuionitsaki2 It breaks my heart to see an animal die, but seeing how the year the film was made was many years from now, I can forgive the camera men and everyone who participated in the execution of that Elephant.This can be viewed with having a lighter side. This is a historical piece of film that is now in a museum because this was an old film. It may not be the first, and there may have been other films between the years of 1900 through 1906, this being in the middle, this is still an interesting film.I do not recommend this for those who do not want to see an Elephant lose her or his life, but you may watch if you will.

Torgo_Approves Oh my God, I was so expecting something more entertaining than this when I downloaded this movie, seeing as 1903 was one of my fave years for movies ever, but it sucked! The "plot", although I'd hesitate to call it that, is about some dumb elephant. It slowly makes its way onto some platform and gets electrocuted to death. Lame. Even for a short film, the plot was too thin to keep my attention. Edison is, like, the worst director ever. Plus, the elephant has no screen presence whatsoever. And the ending? Wow, that wasn't predictable at all. *sarcasm*The picture quality is horrible too. You can barely tell what's going on most of the time. The only positive thing about this movie is that unlike most other un-scary horror flicks this didn't spawn eleven sequels. Other than that this is a complete waste of money and 1 minute of your life you'll never get back.