The Fatal Hand
- 1907
There's a killer on the loose in Muswell Hill
JH Martin directed many films for (Robert) Paul's Animatograph Works, both at the Muswell Hill studio and in the surrounding streets. This lurid 1907 drama has all the elements of what would be one of cinema's most popular genres, the crime film, including a dangerous criminal escaped from the local asylum, a gruesome murder and a thrilling chase. The final showdown takes place high on the scaffolding of a new-build in this burgeoning North London suburb.
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.