BFI

The Beggar's Deceit (d. Cecil M.Hepworth, 1900) is a brief comedy sketch from the Hepworth Company, in which a policeman discovers that a supposedly legless beggar is in fact perfectly mobile, and that it's only in the abstract legal sense that he doesn't have a leg to stand on.

The entire film is staged from a single camera position, with the composition neatly divided into thirds, covering the beggar, the pedestrians and traffic passing in the background, to make it clear that it was shot on location.

The policeman is visible in the far distance from the very start of the film, and his inexorable progress towards the beggar creates suspense as we wonder whether he will fall for the same scam. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't, though his triumph is somewhat muted when he trips over the beggar's trolley in the pursuit of justice.

Michael Brooke

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