As Seen Through A Telescope

A three-shot comedy that uses a similar technique to that which G.A. Smith pioneered in Grandma's Reading Glass (1900) - the pb character (this time a middle-aged man) examines an object (this time a adult female's ankle being stroked by her lover) through some kind of magnifying device (this time a telescope), the object in question beingness shown in shut-up.

Although the editing is unsophisticated, the film does at least testify a very early example of how to make use of bespeak-of-view close-ups in the context of a coherent narrative (which is this film's main advance on Grandma's Reading Glass), even though information technology is only in the very last seconds, when nosotros realise that the watcher has himself been watched, that nosotros run into that the moving picture has been leading upwards to an all too literal punchline.

Smith'southward experiments with editing - other examples of which can be seen in The Osculation in the Tunnel (1899), The House That Jack Built and Allow Me Dream Once again (both 1900) - were alee of most contemporary film-makers, and in hindsight it can clearly be seen that he was laying the foundations of film grammar as nosotros now sympathise it.

Michael Brooke

*This film is included in the BFI DVD compilation 'Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers'.