The '?' Motorist

... among the very early silent films. Made in Great Britain, it seems to have some of the influence of Melies in it. It is simply a couple driving around and doing things that cars - and people - simply cannot do. There are very good special effects for 1906. Note that even in 1906 that the steering wheel is on the right side of the car in Great Britain. However, the motorist drives down the middle of the street. Probably not much worry of oncoming traffic at this point. It's actually on Region One DVD by Kino, but is also very available on youtube, though the print is not very good.

Director Walter Booth's silent short follows a couple in a magical car as the they travel to the moon, hitch a ride on a comet, and take a spin on Saturn's rings before returning to Earth only to run afoul of the law. The film is one of a number of fanciful shorts produced by cinema pioneer Robert Paul. The substitution splices are quite good for the time (especially the switch between the live policeman and the dummy that gets run over). The animation and double exposures are less effective (e.g. the car is translucent and out of scale when it crashes into the courtroom). The images of the car circling Saturn are quaint but memorable. The film was remade and expanded by Booth (then working with producer Charles Urban) as 'The Automatic Motorist' (1911), which follows much the same story except that the car is driven by a robot chauffeur and the trip includes a visit to Saturn's interior and an underwater excursion.

A charmingly subversive comedy-fantasy that pays handsome tribute to the cinema's sister invention, the automobile, suggesting both have the power to disrupt conventional society. It uses the kind of trickery perfected by Melies, but is arguably more potent because of its (relative) grounding in real life.

A well-to-do couple speed down a sunny country road, ordered to stop by an approaching pedestrian policeman. They promptly, gloriously, run him over. As he gives chase, the motorists are blocked by a large building, which they drive up with exhilirating ease. While the blundering bobby gazes in bafflement, the drivers zip through space, circling the moon, skating Saturn's rings, before running out of petrol, freefalling, and collapsing on a court-case that was at any rate degenerating into farce.

Although you can obviously see the joins, the inventiveness of this short holds up remarkably well, as it shows that cars are a nuisance off, as well as on the road. The invention of the motor-car brought with it a greater mobility, a shortening of distances, in effect shortening time and space; as it became possible to travel to more places more quickly, the world became a smaller place.

Ditto the cinema, which could do so much more than the mere photographing of things - not only visiting new worlds, but creating them, inviting our imagination to soar above the mundane. Unlike our own fantasy films, however, audiences then were not hypnotised into forgetting real life, the mendacious absurdity of our social institutions, the arbitrary ineptitude of our law enforcers - is it any wonder we might want to escape?

The film is treasurable for that glorious moment when the peeler, with doltish complacency, linked to the immemorial countryside as he attempts to control this new-fangled aberrance, is upended - thud! - against a steaming bonnet, the majesty of the law a sprawling punchline.

I watched this film on a DVD that was rammed with short films from the period. I didn't watch all of them as the main problem with these type of things that their value is more in their historical novelty value rather than entertainment. So to watch them you do need to be put in the correct context so that you can keep this in mind and not watch it with modern eyes. With the Primitives & Pioneers DVD collection though you get nothing to help you out, literally the films are played one after the other (the main menu option is "play all") for several hours. With this it is hard to understand their relevance and as an educational tool it falls down as it leaves the viewer to fend for themselves, which I'm sure is fine for some viewers but certainly not the majority. What it means is that the DVD saves you searching the web for the films individually by putting them all in one place – but that's about it.

Anyway, I watched this films having just finished moaning about Paul's weak melodrama Buy Your Own Cherries and found myself facing another film from his company if not him himself. However the difference was wonderful and I found the imagination and pioneering work evident here that I see in Paul's best films. Good on so many levels this film is impressive when you put it in the context of when it was made and how much of a novelty things were then. Not only was film a novelty but so were cars and here we have a film that is impressive as a film and, as a film – if you see the difference.

"As a film", this impressed me because it was inventive and funny and seemed made to entertain me and not just show me what the media can do. The second "as a film" relates to how it is made because, although very dated of course, the effects are all good not only in their use but also in the range of techniques used. Heck, I was even quite taken by how smooth the edit between scenes was. Overall then, although directed by Walter Booth, this film stands as a great example of the early work done in British cinema by Robert Paul and his company.

I saw this film today along with quite a few other silent shorts at the German Film Museum in Frankfurt. And, if you want to see it, perhaps you'll want to stop by as well. It is among the best of the shorts they showed--mostly because it was so incredibly stupid--and I mean that in a very positive way! This film begins with some insane drivers out for a ride. A cop tries to stop them and he gets run over for his troubles. But, since this is a wacky film, he's okay AND the drivers begin doing nutty things. I loved seeing the trick shot where the car seemed to drive up the wall! Later, it even flew through space. This was pretty cheesy, but for 1906 it was great. Overall, an incredibly creative and silly film--one that elicited a few laughs when it was played today.