Brighton & Hove films: As Seen Through a Telescope (1900)

Films made in Brighton & Hove
As Seen Through a Telescope

As Seen Through a Telescope
George Albert Smith | 1900 | 58 secs

A gentleman is seen looking t the sky through his telescope (yes, in daylight) as a man and woman approach with a bicycle. The gentleman focuses his telescope on a close-up of the woman's ankle as the man positions it on the cycle pedal. AS the couple move towards the gentleman, he collapses his telescope and sits on a folding stool. The woman, putting up her parasol, enters the gardens, followed by the man, wheeling the bicycle, who pushes the gentleman off his stool.
By Victorian standards this would have been a very suggestive scene. Not just the sight of a stockinged female ankle but a man's hand in contact with it. The cut from the long shot to the circle vignette mask 'as seen through the telescope' was an innovation that audiences would not have been used to. The scene is in Furze Hill, Hove, outside the entrance to St Ann's Well Pleasure Gardens, where Smith had his film works. A chocolate dispensing machine, which can be seen in contemporary postcards, is visible on the wall behind the gentleman.

Films made in Brighton: Silent

Brightonfilm.com