The Corbett Fitzsimmons Fight

The CorbettFitzsimmons Fight is an 1897 documentary film directed by Enoch J. Rector depicting a boxing match between James J. Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons in Carson City, Nevada on St. Patricks Day the same year. Originally running at over 100 minutes, it was the longest film that had ever been released to date as such, it was the worlds first feature film. The technology that allowed this is known as the Latham loop, and Rector was a rival for claiming the invention of the device. He used three such equipped cameras placed adjacently and filming on 63mm nitrate film. Only fragments of the film survive today. The known fragments were transferred in the 1980s from a print owned by Jean A. LeRoy of New York City, the transfer done on a specially built optical printer to convert the film to 35mm film.

The film no longer exists in its entirety however, it is known from contemporary sources that the film included all fourteen rounds of the event, each round lasting three minutes. This was not unusual for a boxing film, although each round would previously have been presented as a separate attraction. What made this film exceptional is a fiveminute introduction that showed former champion John L. Sullivan whom Corbett defeated in 1892 and his manager, Billy Madden, introducing the event, the introduction of referee George Siler, and both boxers entering the ring in their robes.The film also caught the oneminute rest between each round and, when the film was reissued in Boston and many of its subsequent reissues, including in Dublin, included a tenminute epilogue of the empty ring at the end of the fight, into which members of the audience eventually stormed. Even with these approximate timings, the film ran a minimum of 71 minutes, and sources generally report that it exceeded 90 or 100 minutes. The film climaxes with Fitzsimmons hitting Corbett in the solar plexus for a knockout, Corbett crawling outside the space of the camera so that he is not visible above the waist. ........

Source: Wikipedia