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The flat sets and staging of Aerial Submarine are recognisably
in the tradition of the French pioneer Georges Méliès,
whose fantastical approach to filmmaking was an obvious inspiration for
Britain's W.R. Booth. By this time, it was a tradition
becoming rather old fashioned, but for subjects aimed at younger audiences it
was still deemed perfectly appropriate. The story is full of energy and action,
and the pirates, led by a woman for extra shock value, are suitably ruthless.
The pursuit is full of incident, with the father developing the photograph he
has found in his son's camera (a sequence shot in a real photographic
laboratory), which was lost in the scuffle while they are being kidnapped. He
takes it to the authorities, who find the proof convincing and organise a
pursuit which begins at sea before the quarry takes unexpectedly to the air.
Versatile vehicles of all kinds were a feature of Booth's work, notably in his earlier The '?'
Motorist (1906). But despite the confidence of his subtitle, 'A Startling Forecast',
this film proved less prophetic than had the previous year's Airship Destroyer. Still, Booth employs some nice filmmaking tricks,
superimposing water on the flat scenery to make it more realistic and matting in
a moonlit sea for the ocean liner scene.
Bryony Dixon
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Complete film (9:55)
