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In 1900, Bamforth & Co. made three films along very similar lines: Boys Sliding, Leap Frog and the even more self-explanatory Boys' Cricket Match and Fight all depict a large group of boys taking part in a particular pastime that usually degenerates into light-hearted knockabout violence. Boys Sliding is the most formally beautiful of these films, largely because its winter setting naturally lends itself to black and white images, with the boys reduced to animated silhouettes against the snow. The film's single shot captures and contrasts two different types of movement: the rapid, darting back-and-forth motion of the boys with the stately right-to-left tread of the horse-drawn cart, whose driver inevitably ends up on the receiving end of the boys' snowballs. Michael Brooke
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Complete film (1:04)
