Undressing Extraordinary; Or, The Troubles of a Tired Traveller

1901
Silent
2m

Entertaining example of early 'special effects'

In this effective and witty 'trick' film, a gentleman, tipsy and tired, tries to undress for bed, but each time he sheds a layer finds himself re-clad in a different costume. Filmmaker RW Paul was upfront in admitting this was a remake of an earlier film - in fact MéliÃ¨s Déshabillage Impossible from 1900; "an exceptionally fine edition of and already popular and entertaining subject'.

Paul makes some improvements with a variety of theatrical costumes and as the man becomes increasingly hysterical, a skeleton appears, before the bed itself disappears and feathers rain down. The actor is Walter Booth, who starred in many of Paul's early films.

Robert Paul: Giant of Early Film

The most prolific filmmaker of the pioneer period of British film

The multi-talented Robert Paul (1869-1943) was the first British filmmaker to project film for a paying audience, in 1896. A contemporary of the Lumiere brothers, Paul had been producing film, in partnership with Birt Acres, for his own brand of Kinetoscope viewer since April 1895. Shortly after, he began producing for his Theatrograph and Animatographe machines, enjoying a long run at the Alhambra in Leicester Square. As an engineer, Paul made a number of significant innovations - such as an intermittent mechanism for efficiently projecting film. But he also made key innovations in film language, such as the first two-shot fiction film, Come Along Do! (1898). To cap it all, he was a shrewd businessman, with an instinctive grasp of audience tastes.