Children in the Nursery

1898
Silent
1m

Seen but not heard? Three children get up to mischief after mother puts them to bed in this Victorian entertainment.

Seen but not heard? Three children get up to mischief after their mother puts them to bed in this Victorian entertainment. This was one of numerous variations on the theme of 'naughty little boys or girls' in film's early years, demonstrating that Victorian ideals of child discipline didn't always match the reality.

COMEDY. Two boys are put to bed by their mother, who then leaves them. A little girl enters, tickles their faces, and then crawls under the bed. Each boy thinks the other did it and they commence fighting and burst their pillows. The mother enters and parts them just as one is emptying the water jug over the other. She restores order and discovers the girl under the bed. The girl is smacked and sent out of the room.

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.