As Seen Through a Telescope

A man looks through a telescope... at a woman's ankles.

It's a naughty film for 1900, but what's really shocking is the use of cutting and close-up to tell a story. George Albert Smith is largely unremembered in the history of cinema, but he's one of those guys who figured out how to do something right and then everyone went about their business as if he had never existed, until some one actually checked the record. Mendeleyev springs to mind.

What Smith did was figure out the basics of modern film grammar, the elements of a close-up and cutting, working from 1898 through 1904, then went on to do other things in cooperation with his buddy Charles Urban.... and seems to have vanished from film history. After him, other film-makers went about making films in exactly the same old way as before. Melies had his own grammar, Edwin S. Porter and associate developed their own grammar at Edison, but everyone else assumed that the movie screen was just like the stage, and you wanted to be seated in the front row, center. Just take less time with the scene changes.

Unless, as I suspect, while D.W. Griffith was looking through old movies at the Biograph warehouse -- Biograph had been the American distributor for Smith's pictures -- he had chanced on them and realized that they matched some stage techniques of lighting alternate parts of the stage to show action that was happening simultaneously. And sixteen other things that most people had forgotten.

I'd like to think so.

The guy in the top hat, sits on a little chair and looks at things through a telescope, circa 1900. He spots the ankle of a woman as she is assisted by a man. He does not move from the shot. This is an early, simple example of a camera technique. We see most of the film through the lens of the telescope.

Plot

An elderly gentleman in a silk hat sits on a stool in front of a store on the main street of town. He has a telescope that he focuses on the ankle of a young woman who is a short distance away. Her husband catches the gent looking. What will the two men now do?

Cast

I can confidently say I'm not familiar with those involved.

Verdict

As Seen Through a Telescope is a cheeky little tale but as a form of entertainment in this day and age it's fleeting momentary view time and content serves only as a novelty or perhaps for educational purposes.

At its time, ground breaking. Now it's like a Tik Tok video, just more grainy and considerably less obnoxious. There's minimal entertainment value, just a glimpse to a simpler time and a moment of whimsy.

Rants

Tik-Tok, as a middle aged man let me be clear I've never had a Tik-Tok account and never intend to. I've never however understood the controversy, is there a lot of foolishness present? Yes, but there is literally anywhere that people are able to upload content. I just find it sad that people have such little attention span these days that this has become a mainstream standard form of entertainment.

The Good

Revolutionary Charming

The Bad

Fleeting Serves little entertainment value.

As Seen Through a Telescope (1900)

*** (out of 4)

An old man is looking around with his telescope and notices a woman's ankle. He keeps looking at it and thinks he's gotten away until her husband walks up to him. AS SEEN THROUGH A TELESCOPE isn't a masterpiece but it's a fairly fun film that clocks in just under a minute. While there's nothing ground-breaking here there is one big laugh that makes the film worth sitting through. This comes from the same director of GRANDMA'S READING GLASSES but the effect here is put to much better use.

This light-hearted short feature is fairly good both in concept and in execution. The story is simple but not trivial, and it has a rather detached perspective on events that provide some interesting insights into the perspectives of the film-makers. It is also reasonably resourceful in the way that it films the story.

Movies that dealt with voyeurism and similar themes are relatively common in the earliest years of cinema. Some of the early film-makers must have appreciated at once the implications of what they were doing, and the ironies that were often involved in making motion pictures that tell private stories to unknown audiences.

This one verges on becoming a morality play, but its dénouement is too buoyant to make it only that. It's also helped considerably by the on-screen performers, who act pretty naturally, without any really exaggerated gestures or theatrics. It comes across as though simply presenting the characters for what they are, rather than forcing judgments on the audience.

The technical side is also good. The "telescope" effect is believable, and as simple as the story is, the way that it is edited together works well. There are some physical defects in the print, but otherwise it all looks pretty good.