BFI

In the cinema's early years, cameramen were often deployed to other countries to shoot 'phantom rides' of exotic locations. Cecil Hepworth's company Hepwix filmed this example, though rather than focusing on an area of great natural beauty this film leads the viewer through a rather eerie stretch of rural Canada. The telegraph poles at either side of the rail track are somehow uniformly slanted and the houses the train passes are ramshackle wooden constructions. Around the tracks are stretches of grass and the one village we see is empty apart from the glimpse of a child who sees the train coming and runs away, and two men waiting on a rickety wooden platform.

Such a film would have been fascinating to British audiences since it offered views of a part of the world and a way of life so far removed from their own, essentially allowing them a vicarious experience of global travel that few of them could ever expect to afford.

Christian Hayes

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