Lieutenant Pimple and the Stolen Submarine
- Twickenham
- 1914
The famous Stepney gun battle caught on camera as it happened.
This is for real: the Sidney Street Siege - the famous London gunfight between police and army on the street and Latvian revolutionaries holed up in a building - is a seminal early case of a breaking event caught on film by news cameras as it unfolded. While Pathé’s coverage is now the most famous, Gaumont Graphic (barely two months old at the time) was also present.
Gaumont’s coverage is focused on the point at which the building (for reasons never fully explained) caught fire, as well as the police’s efforts to control the crowds of onlookers.
The outbreak of war in July 1914 came as a shock to most. But from our privileged position today, we can find among the films produced in the early 1910s scattered hints of the looming conflict that would split Europe in two.
One ominous sign was the proliferation of stories of international espionage and intrigue (played as drama or comedy), while newsreels offer evidence of the prominence of the armed forces in British society. Even so, the overwhelming majority of films of the period point to a nation blissfully unaware of the horrors to come.