BFI

One of the earliest surviving films by James Williamson, Washing the Sweep (1898) is very similar in concept to G.A. Smith's The Miller and the Sweep and Hanging Out The Clothes (both 1897). Given that both filmmakers were based in Hove and known to be friends, it is probably safe to assume that Smith's films were a direct inspiration.

While The Miller and the Sweep exploited the visual contrast between soot and flour, Williamson explores soot's physical properties, as the sweep blunders past freshly-washed sheets and is doused with water for his pains by a pair of justly outraged washerwomen.

The one-shot result is staged in almost identical fashion to Hanging Out The Clothes, in that it's a three-hander with a clothesline bisecting the screen throughout, though this time the sheets hanging from it play a rather more central role than merely a means of concealment.

If the end result is not as immediately witty as either of the G.A. Smith films, it nonetheless shows that Williamson had already grasped how to stage an economical one-shot film, with all the necessary props (including a water-pump used to spray the sweep) present on screen from the start. Within three years, Williamson would become one of the pioneers of multi-shot narratives with such groundbreaking films as Attack on a China Mission (1900) and Fire! (1901).

Michael Brooke

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