Watch The Seven Ages

Porter photographed a series of short vignettes reminiscent of kiss films such as THE JOHN C. RICE-MAY IRWIN KISS (1896), structuring them around a premise provided by Shakespeare's "seven ages of man," a theme often illustrated in nineteenth-century lantern shows. Beginning with toddlers and concluding with old people, the film shows couples kissing. Each of the first seven scenes contains two shots, the first an establishing shot and the second a medium close-up that gives a better view of each kissing couple. The eighth and final scene is a tableau that shows an old maid alone, introduced with the title "What Age?" To emphasize her solitude, Porter broke with the structure of earlier scenes and refrained from cutting in.