The Unfaithful Wife (c.1900)

1900
Silent
1m

A faithless wife, with a penchant for men in uniform, entertains a sailor before her policeman husband comes home.

As was typical of short comedies in the first few years of cinema, this simple scene encapsulates a story in much the same way that a strip cartoon does. Consciously or not, filmmakers often copied cartoons from the illustrated papers, lantern slides or postcards. The wife is played by a man in drag, while the uniformed men conform to familiar comedy 'types': soldiers are amorous, police are dim.

Early fiction. Woman serves soldier his dinner but her husband, who is a policeman returns so she disposes of his dinner and the man in uniform with whom she is having an affair hides behind a screen. Police continue to consume dinner before discovering the man behind the screen. This film still needs to be formally identified but is most likely to be The Soldier, the Policeman and the Cook by Birt Acres (1899) featuring Arthur Melbourne Cooper as the Soldier.

Fiction and Comedy

The other face of Edwardian local film specialists Mitchell and Kenyon.

For historian Rachael Low, writing in the 1950s, Mitchell and Kenyon was a minor film company, best known for some "faked topicals of the South African War". Thanks to the great 90s rediscovery, we now know that M&K’s specialty was non-fiction. But we also have more of their fiction than before: alongside the works presented here are some 80 more held elsewhere.

Alongside films recreating contemporary events, including the second Boer War and the 'Boxer rebellion' in China, are more straightforward short comedies and dramatic sketches. Together, they illustrate the kinds of entertainment enjoyed by British filmgoers around the turn of the 20th Century.