Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee - Paul - St Paul's South - Arrival of Queen's Carriage

1897
Silent

Queen Victoria can just be made out under her umbrella in this sequence filmed in St Paul's Churchyard during her Diamond Jubilee.

Although the surviving copy of this film was badly damaged, Queen Victoria can just be made out under her umbrella in this sequence filmed in St Paul's Churchyard. Filmed by RW Paul himself it captures the moment that Victoria's carriage arrived at St Paul's, accompanied by the Indian Escort immediately behind. Victoria was too old to struggle up the steps in front of the crowds. One option offered was that a ramp be constructed so that her carriage, horses and all, could head into the Cathedral. Wisely, she opted to stay in her carriage for the service. Given the size of the horses and the steepness of St Paul's steps, one suspects she was right to do so.

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.