|
G.A. Smith made this short comic vignette in 1897, the same year that he made the better-known and more conceptually striking The Miller and the Sweep. That said, Hanging Out The Clothes shows an intelligent awareness of visual and spatial composition, with the action taking place in two distinct planes, initially separated by a hanging sheet that is angrily torn down by the man's wife after she realises what her husband has been up to behind it. In this version she pulls his hair, an alternate version apparently features her laying about him with her umbrella. The husband was played by Tom Green, who appeared in several G.A. Smith films, including Let Me Dream Again (1899), in which he played a similarly lecherous husband - though in that film his infidelity takes place solely in his imagination: a much safer option all round. His real-life wife played her onscreen counterpart, while the maid was played by Laura Bayley, G.A. Smith's wife, who would also appear in many of his films, notably as herself in Miss Bayley (1900). Michael Brooke
|
Complete film (1:16)
