Robbery

1897
Silent
1m

A Victorian gentleman is robbed at gunpoint, not just for his wallet but for his hat and suit as well. Oh, the humiliation

An audacious daylight robbery is played for laughs in this short Victorian skit, poking fun at a certain kind of prudishness and ideas of respectability. At gunpoint, a gentleman hands over his wallet without too much fuss, but when the bandit demands his trousers too, see how he quakes in fear and begs for mercy. Losing cash is one thing, but losing face is clearly much more serious indeed - and the hapless victim waddles off with only his shirt tails to protect his modesty.

This film was directed by British film pioneer Robert W Paul, who made several comedies, trick films and actualities. He was a successful instrument-maker by trade and became the co-inventor of the country's first moving-picture camera in 1896. He built Britain's first film studio in London's Muswell Hill in 1898 and continued to make films there until around 1910, when he turned his focus back to instruments and military technology.

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.