The Waif and the Wizard; or, The Home Made Happy

1901
Silent
1m

A boy asks a magician to entertain his sick sister in this edition of RW Paul's Sentimental Songs with Animated Illustrations.

Although the story might be obscure to us, this film is part of RW Paul's selection of Sentimental Songs with Animated Illustrations. Based on a (presumably) popular song of 1898, the subject was well known in its day. The three years between 1898 and 1901 (when this film was made) saw great advances in filmmaking, if not popular song. With several trick shots and a sophisticated change of location, this film shows evidence of the forward steps taken since the invention of cinematography.

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.