Tilly and the Fire Engines

1911
Silent
35m

Mischievous sisters Tilly and Sally borrow a fire engine and take it for a joy ride in this spirited film comedy.

Disobedient, mischievous and anarchic, the Tilly sisters lit up a popular series of film comedies in the early 1910s. In this episode, Tilly and Sally purloin a horse-drawn fire engine and take it for a joy ride. Fixing the hose to a hydrant they proceed to drench their pursuers before awarding themselves medals for bravery. The film is sadly incomplete - having lost about half its footage - but it does retain the 'emblematic shot' at the end. This was a comedy convention in the 1900s and 1901s adopted from the music hall: the film closes with a close up of the performers, as if it were their curtain call.

The Tilly films were an occasional series of comedies starring Tilly and Sally as a pair of independent-spirited girls who cause havoc in pursuit of fun. The Hepworth Manufacturing Company released nearly 20 Tilly comedies between 1910 and 1915.

Make More Noise: Suffragettes on Film

"You have to make more noise than anybody else!," cried Suffragette pioneer Emmeline Pankhurst. But how to make more noise in silent film?

Pankhurst's strategy was simple but clever: at every public meeting or gathering, Suffragettes should stand up and shout "votes for women!". But how to make more noise in silent film? With moving images becoming increasingly important, the suffragettes needed to be not just heard, but seen. Newsreels were noticeably more neutral in their reporting than newspapers, so their cameramen were invited to big demonstrations, where banners and placards were carefully placed for the cameras.

Suffragettes (often played by men in drag) were common objects of ridicule in film comedies. But some characterisations were more ambiguous, and comedy could even - sometimes - give its female protagonists the freedom to make one hell of a noise.