The Brighton School and the Birth of British Film

Frank Gray

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783030175054
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Filmgeschichte & Filmkritik

This study is devoted to the work of two early British filmmakers, George Albert Smith and James Williamson, and the films that they made around 1900. Internationally, they are known collectively as the 'Brighton School' and are positioned as being at the forefront of Britain's contribution to the birth of film. The book focuses on the years 1896 to 1903, as it was during this short period that film emerged as a new technology, a new enterprise and a new form of entertainment. Beginning with a historiography of the Brighton School, the study goes on to examine the arrival of the first 35mm films in Britain, the first film exhibitions in Brighton and the first projection of film in Brighton. Both Smith and Williamson's work features a progression from the production of single shot unedited films to multi-shot edited films. Their subject matter was inspired by a knowledge of contemporary pantomime, humour, literature, theatre, mesmerism, the magic lantern and current affairs and their practices were underpinned by active involvement in the new film trade. Through the exploration of how these filmmakers cultivated a new way of understanding film and its commercial potential, this book establishes them as key figures in the development of British film culture.

© The Author(s) 2019

Frank GrayThe Brighton School and the Birth of British Filmhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17505-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Frank Gray¹

(1)

University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

Frank Gray

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Fig. 1.1

The Kiss in the Tunnel, G.A. Smith, 1899. Courtesy of BFI National Archive. Albert and Laura Bayley Smith within the film’s set, St Ann’s Well Gardens, Hove

This study is devoted to the work of two early English film-makers, George Albert Smith and James Williamson, their key films and the contexts in which they were made and screened. The years 1896 to 1903 provide the central focus as it is during this short period that film emerged as a new technology and a new form of entertainment, and Smith and Williamson, through their respective practices, made significant contributions to the development of film form and the development of a new industry. Internationally, they are known collectively as the ‘Brighton School’ and positioned as being at the forefront of the birth of the British film industry. However, despite their ‘place’ within the world history of film, there has never been a thorough investigation into the nature of the Brighton School. It was the recognition of this fact that provided the catalyst for the production of this work.

Historically, Smith and Williamson’s film-related activities were informed and to some extent determined by the very first years of film production, retailing and exhibition in Britain, Europe and America. Smith (1864–1959) established his ‘film factory’ at Hove in 1897 and there he produced his major films. His wife, the actor Laura Bayley, played an instrumental role in this creative work as it drew upon his, her and their knowledge of the magic lantern, music hall, theatre, pantomime, popular literature, mesmerism and the work of other film-makers. In this context, two very significant edited films were made: The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899) and Grandma’s Reading Glass (1900).

Williamson (1855–1933) drew on similar impulses for his films as well as photography, aspects of contemporary English life and current events such as the Anglo-Boer War and the Boxer Rebellion. His films from 1900 built upon Smith’s conception of the shot and the edited sequence, and, as a result, he produced his first multi-shot narrative works—Attack on a China Mission (1900) and Fire! (1901). Smith and Williamson provided their contemporary film-makers with a new understanding of the edited film—a concept which would enable film-makers to move beyond the paradigm of theatre and into a consciousness determined by the developing nature of cinematography itself. Their work became known quickly across Europe and America, and it was not only interpreted by other film-makers but also plagiarised.

This study begins by examining the historiography of the Brighton School and then, within an overarching chronological construction, it examines the arrival of the first 35mm films in Britain in 1894 and the first film exhibitions in Brighton in 1895, the first projection of film in Brighton in 1896, the significance of Robert Paul, Smith’s establishment of his film processing works in 1897 and his progression from the production of single-shot films to trick films to multi-shot films from 1897 to 1900. It then turns to Williamson’s multi-shot realist narratives of 1900–1903 and concludes with a consideration of the exhibition of his film, The Soldier’s Return (1902). This linear history carefully demonstrates the ways in which these film-makers cultivated a very particular understanding of this new medium, its capabilities and its commercial potential. It pays attention to the fact that they made a significant contribution to the evolution of the concept of editing (the combination of individual shots of film into a distinctive whole). By doing so, they positioned editing as fundamental to film’s ability as a medium to organise and present sequential and continuous action.

The study works to locate Smith and Williamson and their films in relationship to an understanding of early European and American film history; the emergence of a British film culture in the 1890s and 1900s; the evolution of particular film genres such as comedy, ‘trick films’ and rescue dramas through the use of particular themes, techniques, characters and narrative structures; and the explicit and implicit ideological expression of contemporary ideas and issues. This approach is designed not only to illuminate the nature of particular films but also to provide a rationale for assigning a Smith film, for instance, with a particular authorial and historical character.

Smith and Williamson’s films have tended to be read as simple, ‘early’ and ‘primitive’ because of their short lengths, theatrical staging, lack of sustained narrative action and the relative absence of editing. The assumption is that such texts are ‘immature’ and can best be understood by positioning them within a teleological portrait of early cinema which charts the evolution of film form from such one-minute, unedited works to the ‘mature’, edited, multireel narrative films which began to appear in the 1910s. This formalist approach can be applied to the work of Smith and Williamson because of their contributions to the early history of film form.

This study however is not focused exclusively on textual analyses detached from the historical circumstances in which these particular texts were produced and consumed. It recognises the need to interpret early cinema as a relatively complex and sophisticated cultural and commercial practice and, as such, requires the texts in question to be attached to history. It therefore presents relevant contextual histories not as ‘background information’ but as constituent elements of this history. These interactions between text and context, between film and history, have been investigated in order to create a dialectic that should be seen as essential for the study of cultural artefacts of this kind. This study therefore mounts a broad historical investigation into the many histories relevant to our understanding of the origins, meanings and uses of the films made by Smith and Williamson from 1897 to 1903. Their work and these micro-histories and analyses are considered in terms of their relevance generally to the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras and particularly to a dynamic set of cultural, aesthetic, economic, geographical and technological relationships and frameworks that influenced not only their activities as film-makers but also the exhibition of their films, their reception by audiences and, more broadly, the emergence of a new industry.

Framing these relationships is the relevant macro-framework presented by the grand narrative of the Second Industrial Revolution.¹ John Mann provides a succinct definition of its seismic character: ‘Between 1880 and 1914, most Western countries experienced their most rapid economic growth. Agriculture was transformed, and migration from agriculture to the towns and overseas reached its highest levels. The “Second Industrial Revolution” brought big capital, high science, and complex technology especially into three industries—iron and steel, metal manufacturing, and chemicals. […] This second revolution in economic power changed societies’ (Mann 2012, p. 597).

Britain was thoroughly revolutionised in this period. It became urbanised and industrialised with improved health, life expectancy, literacy, domestic income and leisure time. The new primary technologies (such as the combustion engine and electricity) and the related networks and innovations they inspired transformed industry, commerce and the everyday world. This revolution engendered the creation of new cultural and commercial spaces as represented by theatres, concert halls, music halls, art galleries, libraries, universities, department stores, promenades and parks. All of these developments also fuelled a new consciousness and a new politics as marked by the rise of trade unions, the Labour Party and the suffragette movement. Levin has referred to this era’s rapidity of change as creating a ‘sense of living in the future’ (Levin 2010, p. 9).

Late Victorian and Edwardian capitalism, with its competitive free-market ethos, embodied these social and economic changes through the rise of mass production, standardisation, chain stores (the creation of the ‘multiple’), national marketing (i.e. advertisements, catalogues and trade periodicals), the use of mail-order and contemporary communications (the postal service, telegraph and telephone) and nationwide delivery networks (the rail and postal services). The practices of photography, the magic lantern and film were all part of this new culture, being interwoven into a set of interrelated networks, chains, services and activities that connected manufacturers (producers) to dealers, retailers, exhibitors and audiences. Smith and Williamson were part of this community of practice, and, as such, they were embedded within this modern world of production, commerce and consumption.

The Historical Contexts

This study draws upon the surviving biographical documentation and a range of primary sources, such as local newspapers, to piece together the relevant aspects of the lives of Smith and Williamson in relation to their work as film-makers. It does not give equal weight to these two men. Smith dominates this study because he took the first major steps in terms of developing a ‘film factory’ in Hove and experimenting actively with the medium. It is also his early life as a mesmerist, pleasure garden manager and magic lanternist which provides a unique and intriguing context for his film work. Williamson, the professional chemist, photographer and photographic retailer, is positioned as first drawing upon Smith’s key cinematographic ideas and then employing them to create texts which in their own terms were genuinely radical in both form and content as well as simultaneously building what became one of the country’s most successful film production companies.

Smith and Williamson were both residents of Hove across the 1890s and 1900s, so this investigation draws upon the history of Brighton and Hove in this period in order to situate the production, exhibition and reception of their films within this geographical and cultural space. At the end of the Victorian era, Brighton and Hove was a distinctive conurbation on the south coast of England of marked social and economic contrasts that hosted a Victorian tourist centre. These twin towns, approximately fifty miles south of London, had undergone a radical transformation across the nineteenth century. Brighton began the century with a reputation as a genteel, fashionable royal resort but then literally exploded after the coming of the railway in the 1840s into a Victorian ‘Las Vegas’ of hotels, guest houses, theatres, music halls, piers, amusements, an aquarium, restaurants and shops. Over two miles of the seafront was developed to accommodate this ‘pleasure world’, known as ‘London-by-the-Sea’, and across the 1890s over a million visitors visited this centre of amusement and spectacle each year. In contrast to this familiar identity, Brighton had also developed into a railway town with small-scale manufacturing and a working-class community living in densely packed terraced housing in the town’s centre. At the end of the century, Hove was essentially a suburb of Brighton that provided a relatively well-designed middle-class environment of wide, tree-lined streets and spacious homes. It served as a respite from the energy, diversity and carnival-like environment found next door in Brighton. (Hove became incorporated as a town in 1897 and was merged into a single administration with Brighton in 1997. The new ‘Brighton & Hove’ became a city by Royal Charter in 2001.)

As a site for modern, popular spectacle, Brighton provided entertainments of a local and national standard for working- and middle-class audiences. It also had a very active photographic culture, a history which had been initiated by William Constable’s opening of his Daguerreotype studio, the ‘Blue Room’, on Marine Parade in 1841 (Erredge 1862, p. 303). This was a perfect environment for the film pioneer. To have knowledge of this entertainment culture and its photographic studios were significant factors in Smith and Williamson’s use of the new medium. Brighton and Hove also possessed a natural feature from the early spring to the late summer of each year—relatively long periods of sunshine. This was essential for early film production, as it required natural illumination. It also had, not unexpectedly, a community of actors and theatrical workers that would be invaluable to the work of these two film-makers.

In this period, Britain and Brighton’s vibrant tourist and entertainment economies generated great profit for those with interests in it. Smit...