Me and My Two Friends

Worthing
1 Jan 1898
Silent

A beatific image of Victorian childhood

This heart-melting fragment, long impossible to show publicly due to its unusual format, gives us one of the most iconic images in early British film. Not only does it showcase the pin-sharp detail of William Kennedy Laurie Dickson's unique 68mm film. It also, in the barely four seconds that survive, seems to distil many of the modern stereotypes of Victorian Britain: pictorial, sentimental in its attitude to children and animals, and intensely patriotic.

The film appears to be related to the films shot by Dickson to mark the launch of the Worthing lifeboat, and may have been the concluding shot of a longer sequence featuring the girl and her companions. As it stands, it has the flavour of an advertisement - very much like the celebrated series marketing Pears' soap, which made a point of using fresh-faced young children.

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From the collection

Victorian Film

Celebrating the birth of film: the last great invention of the Victorian era.

Queen Victoria's long reign famously saw extraordinary advances: in industry, transport, science, culture... But one late but great innovation is too often missed from the list: the moving image. Yet film forever changed the way we see the world. And even before the French Lumière brothers presented their first demonstrations in London in 1895, British filmmakers were beginning to make their mark.

Here you'll find the most comprehensive gallery of Victorian films ever assembled. Hundreds of films made over the last six years of Victoria's reign, during which film was transformed from the pursuit of a handful of showmen, chemists and amateur enthusiasts into a dynamic industry, from fairground novelty into the greatest entertainment of the age.