Strictly, 1910 was the year the Edwardian age came to an end, although in
fact historians tend to see the years up to the Great War as part of the same
era. Like France's Belle Époque (which overlaps, but extends back into the 19th
century), it was a period of growing prosperity, class struggle, increasing
mobility and invention - with innovations including aviation, the motor car,
x-rays, psychoanalysis, the mass media, the phonograph, physics, polar
exploration, radio and countless others. The death of Edward VII was a major
event for the cinema with many film companies covering the occasion in very much
the same way as they had done for Queen Victoria's funeral a decade earlier.
For the most part, production continued much as it had in previous years to
supply exhibitors with a mixed programme of actualities, interest films,
one-reel dramas and comedies. Britain produced 620 titles in 1910, of which an
impressive 300 survive in the BFI National Archive. Even accounting for the very
wide margin of error in the records left to us from this period, this is a good
survival rate. But several key developments were beginning to impose themselves.
Foremost were the changes initiated by the 1909 Cinematograph Act: a boom in
the building of purpose-built cinemas. And with the increased investment that
bricks and mortar could attract, the cinema business began to evolve. Smaller
companies based on individual exhibitors tended to fail and more highly
capitalised companies renting films and equipment began to dominate. A
regular audience meant that efficiencies could be made in the supply and
marketing of films across the country, with far reaching implications for the
industry.
One result of this was the tentative launch of regular newsreels from June of
1910, a phenomenon which would gather momentum in 1911 with the launch of many
competing newsreel suppliers. This industry was immediately successful, and
companies such as Pathé and Gaumont would continue to supply news and
cinemagazines to the cinemas until television took over their function decades
later. The polar fever that had been a feature of the early century continued,
with the departure of the British Antarctic Expedition for the South Pole well
covered by the new newsreel cameramen. These same cameramen also covered the
huge demonstrations mounted by the Suffragists in their campaign for votes for
women.
Other films in this selection show the development of science and nature
filmmaking, with Percy Smith's classic time-lapse study The Birth of a Flower,
and of the sponsored film in Day in the Life of a Coal Miner, with its
surprisingly frank look at the drudgery of life in the Wigan mines and the more
sedate activities of a Christmas decoration factory.
The fiction film, meanwhile, was evolving at a less frenetic pace. The comedy
series, featuring regular named characters such Little Willie (The Man to Beat Jack
Johnson), Three-Fingered Kate (The Exploits of Three-Fingered Kate) or the Tilly
girls (Tilly, The Tomboy, Visits the Poor), made its first appearance around this
time, and would rapidly become the standard model. One-reel drama was still the
norm in Britain. Films like Aerial Submarine and The Heart of a Fishergirl had an appeal
to audiences who had become used to them, but they would soon be outclassed by longer
films from the continent. In 1910 the Danish film industry led off the race for longer
films with The White Slave Trade, a multi-reel drama of sensational and salacious
content leading to the development of the longer feature and the crime serial. Britain
would have some catching up to do.
Bryony Dixon
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