Amazing Remastered Historical Footage

[James Y]

Genuine historical footage, stabilized, with sound and colorization added (for effect only).

This is amazing. The absolute closest you can get to actual time travel.

New York, 1911:

https://youtu.be/FWtWJAmHuc8

Paris, 1900:

https://youtu.be/9VUVqWckLDo

Jim

[MacLaren]

That's really cool.

[The Meat man]

Wow, that is fascinating! It's almost like being there in person!

[James Y]

It’s amazing to think that all of the people in these films, including the filmmakers and all the little kids, are all dead. It’s different from watching old fictional movies that you know the filmmakers and actors are dead; these films are a view of slices of real life, albeit enhanced through modern technology. This especially hits home for me with the second-to-last film on this video, with all the little kids chasing the camera. They would have been around the same age as my maternal grandparents. Every one of those young kids has passed away, and if they lived long, full lives, they passed away from old age a long time ago.

21 Old Films From 1895 to 1902:

https://youtu.be/YZuP41ALx_Q

This second video is interesting and a little bit creepy. The AI is far from perfect and is still unnatural, especially the eye blinking. But they do give a vague impression of what they might have appeared in life, especially the subjects of the older portraits.

Historical Portraits Brought To Life Using AI:

https://youtu.be/2s_hIs8s_N4

Jim

[The Meat man]

It’s amazing to think that all of the people in these films, including the filmmakers and all the little kids, are all dead. It’s different from watching old fictional movies that you know the filmmakers and actors are dead; these films are a view of slices of real life, albeit enhanced through modern technology. This especially hits home for me with the second-to-last film on this video, with all the little kids chasing the camera. They would have been around the same age as my maternal grandparents. Every one of those young kids has passed away, and if they lived long, full lives, they passed away from old age a long time ago.

Jim

The second video in your first post, Paris 1900, shows a bunch of little boys pushing around their sailboats in a pond. I couldn't help wondering how many of them died in the trenches 14+ years later.

What makes these videos so fascinating to me is that it gives a window into unremarkable everyday life for these people. There's nothing put on or acted out. It's just daily life, albeit over a hundred years ago.

Too bad they didn't have video cameras back in antiquity. That would really be amazing!

[James Y]

It’s amazing to think that all of the people in these films, including the filmmakers and all the little kids, are all dead. It’s different from watching old fictional movies that you know the filmmakers and actors are dead; these films are a view of slices of real life, albeit enhanced through modern technology. This especially hits home for me with the second-to-last film on this video, with all the little kids chasing the camera. They would have been around the same age as my maternal grandparents. Every one of those young kids has passed away, and if they lived long, full lives, they passed away from old age a long time ago.

Jim

The second video in your first post, Paris 1900, shows a bunch of little boys pushing around their sailboats in a pond. I couldn't help wondering how many of them died in the trenches 14+ years later.

What makes these videos so fascinating to me is that it gives a window into unremarkable everyday life for these people. There's nothing put on or acted out. It's just daily life, albeit over a hundred years ago.

Too bad they didn't have video cameras back in antiquity. That would really be amazing!

I agree, Connor, that having moving picture or video cameras WAY back would be awesome. Like back to the 1000s, or the 5th Century A.D., or back in Julius Caesar’s time. Or how about footage of Vlad Tepes (AKA Vlad The Impaler, AKA Vlad Dracula) back in the 1400s. Or footage of the Trojan War.

People have such a romanticized view of the past, but the mundane everyday life in those film footages gives a much more accurate feel of the times. I noticed some Youtube commenters said they were amazed the people weren’t period actors. Those who think like that are way off the mark. The people in the footage don’t even look like period actors, because they were real, and their lives, their backgrounds and their behaviors were genuine for the time, something that actors in period costumes can never fully capture onscreen.

As far as how many of those boys may have died in WW1, I agree. There is beauty in some of the European footage, but also a hint of sadness. When you see the faces smiling at the camera, you know what they didn’t about what was to be in the coming decades. None of them could have imagined they would be watched over a century later on something called the Internet.

I wonder if people 100 to 200+ years in the future will wonder what life is like now, and wish they were living in our time period right now. Of course, they’ll have much better records and MUCH more footage preserved, and will probably be able to experience it in full immersive 3D, as if they ARE actually here.

Jim

[James Y]

Childhood 120 years ago (1895 - 1900)

According to the description, the children at the beach catching shrimp was filmed in 1896, and the baby strollers parade at the end was filmed in 1897. The way these films have been restored, it looks like they could have been filmed yesterday.

https://youtu.be/g1T2tHQrBWg

Jim

[Naperville]

These are excellent. I watched a few of them back maybe 6 months ago. Now there are more of them and they're great.

[The Meat man]

So neat!

[James Y]

San Francisco, A Trip Down Market Street; April 14, 1906

This footage was filmed 4 days before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

This especially caught my eye, because my paternal grandfather (my dad’s dad) was living in San Francisco at that very time, and was 34 or 35 years old. Before the earthquake, immigration had been pestering my grandfather for his papers, but he had none, so he kept putting them off. He had come to North America in the late 1800s by stowing away on a ship from Japan, had jumped ship in Vancouver, and had made his way down to San Francisco. After the earthquake, my grandfather, like many other people, gave authorities the excuse that all his papers had been burned in the subsequent fires. That was the last time the authorities ever asked him for his papers. Honestly, I don’t know how he did it, but he’d had a hard life, and was tough and shrewd (and was physically large for that time period, at over 6 feet tall). I never met him; he died at 80 years old, about 12 years before I was born.

https://youtu.be/VO_1AdYRGW8

Jim

[James Y]

Two more videos:

Laborers in Victorian England, 1901

Actually, 1901 was the beginning of the Edwardian Period. It’s amazing watching this footage and focusing on individuals. It makes it difficult to believe that none of these people exist anymore, in a physical sense. The way they stare at the movie camera, which was still a somewhat unique device at the time, is probably the way they would stare at anybody who time traveled back to that era in modern clothing and appearance.

Funny thing is, many people today still act the exact same way when they see a TV camera on the street, or wherever.

https://youtu.be/5HbElEqm1TQ

10 Tragedies Caught on Film

https://youtu.be/8jekTu0NobQ

Jim

[James Y]

Snow Battle, 1897.

This is the first of these videos that made me laugh. The poor guy on the bicycle was just minding his own business, and they all start nailing him to the point he just leaves his hat behind.



https://youtu.be/UaYfi-A7xY0

Jim

[The Meat man]

Haha! That's pretty funny. I like the man throwing snowballs while wearing his top hat. :)

[James Y]

Los Angeles Sunset Strip - 1964

OK, this is only about half as old as much of the footage in this thread. This footage is a year younger than I am, but I’m betting it’s still older than many (most?) of the members of this forum. This footage is not amazing, but it’s still like a brief trip back in time:

https://youtu.be/ESybc3sKi5Y

Jim

[James Y]

French Acrobats From 1896:

https://youtu.be/aXzC4L53iIU

Jim

[James Y]

1860s Wild West Rider Talks About the Pony Express

Born in 1845 and died in 1930. Interview was filmed in 1929.

https://youtu.be/BfJfmAwqDSY

Jim

[Naperville]

I really like this image processing technology. These videos are 95% of the way "there" to decades in the past. They are so life like it is astonishing.

[Evil D]

What's wild is how little some of those places have changed over the last 100 years. If you replace the clothing and cars/carriages with modern clothes and cars the streets and buildings are the same today.

[James Y]

Pistol Duel in Mexico City, 1896

This is a recreation of a real pistol duel, with a fatality, that had occurred the day before this was filmed. Lumiere, the filmmaker, had received permission from the authorities to film it.

https://youtu.be/Dr92rob6s3w

Jim

[James Y]

'The Haunted House' (1907, colorized)

https://youtu.be/E7oqe0SwaR4

Jim