The Haunted Curiosity Shop

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Contains racist characterisation (blackface)

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The Haunted Curiosity Shop

1901
Sound
2m

The strange objects in this shop are brought uncannily to life thanks to a series of early camera tricks.

This anarchic fantasy film seems to follow no rhyme or reason, yet its construction will have been far from improvised. Each transformation, vanishing trick or apparition is achieved by in-camera editing, pausing the camera while carefully placing and replacing objects and people in the studio.

Meticulous planning, props, pyrotechnics and a vivid imagination are what's required. This is a British take on a style of illusionist filmmaking pioneered by the Frenchman George Méliès.

Robert W Paul was one of Britain's earliest filmmakers, who introduced greater professionalism to early film. Paul was a successful instrument-maker by trade and became the co-inventor of the country's first moving-picture camera in 1896. He built a 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. This film was made by his company, Paul's Animatograph Works.

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.