Incoming Tide

Worthing
1898
Silent

Worthing waves at us in this mesmerising early film

There is a tide in the affairs of film... In the Victorian period, films of rough seas constituted a genre unto themselves and, as this example filmed at Worthing demonstrates, a strangely engaging one at that. We should think of films like this not as precursors of mainstream cinema but as the new media of its day: not narratives but mesmerising meditations on movement itself.

THE TIDE AT WORTHING

The Victorian World

Vivid portraits of everyday Victorian life, thanks to the first generation of filmmakers to take to Britain’s streets.

Some of the most fascinating of early films are those which are content to watch the world go by. Numerous filmmakers parked their cameras on street corners, in parks, on seaside promenades or outside workplaces or churches to capture fleeting moments of everyday life.

In their own day, these films held a mirror up to Victorian society. Today, these images of our ancestors – relaxed, smiling and laughing, gazing at us through the camera lens - are a gift of moving history. The offer us extraordinary insights into a lost world, more vivid than any still photograph or written account.