StyleSk8r
At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
Myron Clemons
A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
Edgar Allan Pooh
. . . but it appears that no one involved with making Edison's film offerings catalog in 1897, or in organizing the first 141 Edison films which make up Part One of the Library of Congress (LOC) Edison collection, OR at IMDb have bothered to watch BOTH of the SUTRO BATH films. Therefore, each of these three listings contradict the other two, and all three listings are inaccurate and incomplete. Since I have watched BOTH of these half-minute live action shorts four times, I guess that makes me the world's leading living authority on them (but if YOU watch them each five times, you can have my title). SUTRO BATHS should actually be called SUTRO BATHS, No. 1, since it was filmed first, on 9/20/1897. But at the time it was made, there apparently was no thought about a sequel, just as GHOSTBUSTERS is called just that, and not GHOSTBUSTERS No. 1. SUTRO BATHS has 14 males going down a BIGGER slide than that shown in the female area in what Edison and the LOC call SUTRO BATHS, No. 1, which was filmed five weeks after the guys plunged (that is, 10/25/1897), and released as a follow-up to the men (though IMDb "Movie Connections" inexplicably states that the female film was the prelude to the guys'). In this short, 15 women make it down their shorter slide into a less crowded pool. Though the men's backdrop is a three-tier spectator section, there is no such structure in THIS film. The female attire shown here is closer to our 21st Century customs than the black trunks and T-shirts sported by the guys.
