As Seen through a Telescope

1900
Silent
1m

A peeping Tom gets a shocking glimpse of stocking in this early take on film voyeurism.

Hitchcock wasn't the first to explore film voyeurism. This skit by the inventive GA Smith has some 'What the Butler saw'-type fun with the old scenario of the peeping Tom caught spying on a young couple. Crucially, though, the film allows the audience to enjoy his view - without the guilt. Even in late-Victorian England, however, there was nothing too shocking about an illicit glimpse of stocking, so Smith spices up the scene by showing the young man slyly stroking his ladyfriend's ankle.

The circular vignette used to represent the view through the lens would soon to become a cinematic cliché; Smith used the same trick in the more elaborate Granny's Reading Glass, released at the same time.

Inventing Film Language

As with any new technology, it was film’s early adopters whose innovations and discoveries began to map out what is possible.

The first filmmakers had a lot to learn, but they learnt quickly, driven by their own creative ambitions and by audiences' hunger for novelty. Most of the techniques we know today were in place by the end of the Victorian period.

It was the Victorian pioneers who developed the essential building blocks of film; close-ups, pans and travelling shots; editing and principles of continuity. And their ambition spurred them to innovate numerous tricks and effects, from jump-cuts, to double-exposure and even split screen. Generations of later filmmakers would refine these methods, but the groundwork had already been done.