English
1 reel
format unknown
B&W
Silent
"In view of the increasing use of substandard motion pictures for practical purposes by scientific and professional men and women, it is to be expected that among the ten best would appear a surgical film. Philip A. O'Connor, of Rochester, N. Y., filmed A Reparative Operation for a Congenital Defect, which was performed by Dr. William L. Wolfson, of Brooklyn, N. Y., and this film is included by Movie Makers in this annual listing because of two chief reasons. This very delicate operation required a large degree of manipulation by the surgeon, without the use of instruments, which adds to the danger of the operator's obscuring the field of vision and, consequently, to the difficulty of securing a clear motion picture record of his work. In spite of this handicap, the admirable cooperative effort between surgeon and photographer enabled Mr. O'Connor to present an exceptionally visible study of Dr. Wolfson's technique. In the second place, the film gave a complete record of the entire operation, from start to finish, including the preliminary anesthesia. Whatever hazards may have existed photographically were so easily hurdled by Mr. O'Connor that the person viewing the film is almost unconscious of the fact that it is a film. Needless to say, the technical photographic details of exposure, focus and lighting were of the highest order." Movie Makers, Dec. 1933, 500.
O'Connor writes on the shooting procedure for surgery films in "Showing the Surgeon at Work" (Movie Makers, March 1936, 117, 123).
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Amateur Cinema