I recently gave an hour-long Zoom presentation on the “Art of Alfred Hitchcock” for the 19th Century Charitable Foundation in Chicago. I talked about the relationship between voyeurism and film editing and showed clips from THE LODGER, REAR WINDOW, VERTIGO and PSYCHO. You can now watch it on YouTube:
Tag Archives: As Seen Through a Telescope
Adventures in Early Movies: As Seen Through a Telescope
Voyeurism, the practice of spying for the purpose of sexual gratification, has long been one of the most popular themes of the movies. It was of course one of Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite themes (and don’t you just love how Lady Gaga didn’t merely namecheck three random Hitchcock movies in “Bad Romance” but actually proved a little cinephile cred by citing the loose trilogy of voyeurism that is Rear Window, Vertigo and Psycho, hmmmm?). It is worth pointing out though that voyeurism has always been a popular cinematic theme dating back to the earliest days of film. A case in point is George Albert Smith’s delightful As Seen Through a Telescope from 1900, a one minute short that I frequently show to classes before screening Rear Window to prove this very point.
As Seen Through a Telescope begins with a long shot of an old man standing on a public sidewalk looking at something through a telescope. A young couple comes walking down the road. They stop momentarily in order for the man to tie the woman’s shoelaces, which have come undone. The old man trains his telescope on this act and Smith cuts to a second shot from the point-of-view of the old man looking through the telescope: a close-up of the woman hiking up her floor-length skirt by several inches so that the old man (and we the viewers) get a good look at her shapely ankle. Smith then cuts back to the original long shot as the young couple walk past the old man and his telescope. Apparently aware of his spying, the young man conks the old man over the head, knocking him off of the stool where he has been perched.
Although it is over a hundred years old, the final moment of this simple, three-shot movie always gets a big laugh from my Intro to Film students, which I believe cuts to the heart of the appeal of voyeurism-themed films. Movies about voyeurism allow viewers to share the voyeur’s delight but in a way that is completely guilt-free. We laugh at the end of As Seen Through a Telescope because we know that the “dirty old man” got what was coming to him for looking at something he shouldn’t have. But this doesn’t change the fact that we got to assume his exact point-of-view and vicariously experience the same titillation that he did. It wasn’t really us who did the spying we tell ourselves, and thus we can applaud the film’s moralistic ending. When it comes to experiencing a movie, sight is the most important empirical sense. Therefore, movies about the act of looking automatically become complex, multi-layered experiences. Directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell knew this and accordingly manipulated viewers through an alternating use of subjective and objective shots. But they could have never done so had George Albert Smith not paved the way with a pioneering film like As Seen Through a Telescope.
George Albert Smith, a man who knew a thing or two about looking:
As Seen Through a Telescope can be found on volume 2 of Kino’s Essential The Movies Begin DVD box set. It can also be viewed online here.
Top 25 Films Made Before 1920
Because the language of cinema was still dramatically evolving from 1895 to 1919 and because most of the films made during this period were shorts rather than feature length works, this list mixes shorts and features together and is presented in chronological order rather than order of preference. For the earlier, shorter films, I’ve included links to YouTube videos where they can be seen in their entirety.
As with all of my “best of the decade” lists, I’m also limiting myself to one film per director in the interest of diversity. Otherwise, D.W. Griffith and Louis Feuillade would have about half of the slots on this list locked up.
1. Rough Sea at Dover (Acres/Paul, UK, 1895)
2. Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (Lumieres, France, 1896)
Bertrand Tavernier has referred to this Lumiere Brothers masterpiece as the “first horror movie” because, as legend has it, early audiences reacted to the image of a train moving towards the camera by fleeing in terror. This is a simple “actuality” that depicts just what the title states in a single shot lasting approximately 42 seconds. But it’s also a good example of how well made the Lumiere Brothers’ films were: the dramatic contrast of the black and white cinematography, coupled with diagonal perspective of the composition, makes the film an aesthetically pleasing experience even when viewed today. It can be seen in its entirety on YouTube by clicking the image above.
3. Seminary Girls (Edison, USA, 1897)
4. As Seen Through a Telescope (Smith, UK, 1900)
5. Le village de Namo – Panorama pris d’une chaise à porteurs (Veyre, France/Indochina, 1900)
6. A Trip to the Moon (Melies, France, 1902)
Georges Melies was the polar opposite of the Lumieres; he made narrative films in the fantasy genre that showcased trick photography and special effects. He also shot all of his movies in an ingeniously constructed glass-walled studio in Paris. Melies’ most famous film is A Trip to the Moon, a 14-minute sci-fi adventure about astronomers making a maiden moon voyage, where they do battle with the moon’s alien inhabitants before triumphantly returning to earth. This gained renewed fame when it became a major reference point in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo and was subsequently re-released in a splendidly restored color version. I’m including a link to a YouTube video above but please note that the image quality here is far inferior to what you will find on the magnificent Flicker Alley blu-ray.
7. A Daring Daylight Burglary (Mottershaw, UK, 1903)
8. Life of an American Fireman (Porter, USA, 1903)
9. New York Subway (Bitzer, USA, 1905)
10. Rescued By Rover (Fitzhamon/Hepworth, UK, 1905)
11. The Life of Christ (Guy, France, 1906)
Alice Guy, a true movie pioneer, began her directing career in 1896 and is sometimes credited as the first person to make a narrative film (as opposed to Lumiere-style actualities). A DVD compilation of her work released by Kino in 2009 is a revelation: it contains stunt comedies, panoramic views of exotic places, and fascinating early experiments with sound and color. My favorite of her films that I’ve seen is The Life of Christ, which recounts “the greatest story ever told” in 25 single-shot tableaux-like scenes that, at 33 minutes, made it relatively epic in 1906. Especially effective is the climactic resurrection, which is bolstered by a beautiful score on Kino’s DVD. This is my second favorite Jesus movie after Pasolini’s.
12. The Golden Beetle (Chomon, France, 1907)
13. Moscow Clad in Snow (Mundwiller, France/Russia, 1909)
14. A Child of Paris (Perret, France, 1913)
Also included in Kino’s “Gaumont Treasures” DVD set is a an entire platter devoted to Leonce Perret, an important director previously unknown in the States. The major revelation of the set is A Child of Paris, a feature film from 1913 that is shockingly sophisticated in terms of its cinematography (including the kind of camera movements and oblique compositions that wouldn’t become commonplace for years to come). The Dickensian story concerns a little girl who becomes an orphan, is sent to a boarding school, runs away and then is kidnapped by a gang of thieves. The acting is surprisingly naturalistic for the time and the use of real locations – in Paris and Nice – is impressive in the extreme.
15. Cabiria (Pastrone, Italy, 1914)
16. Child of the Big City (Bauer, Russia, 1914)
17. The Cheat (Demille, USA, 1915)
Forget what you think you know about the conservative purveyor of stolid 1950s epics and experience the raw power of Cecil B. DeMille’s scintillating “yellow peril” melodrama when the trailblazing director was just beginning his career in the mid-1910s. Edith Harvey (Fannie Ward) is a socialite who embezzles money from a charity, loses it in a bad investment and borrows money from shady Japanese businessman Hishuru Tori (Sessue Hayakawa) in order to pay it back. The film’s most outrageous scene involves the Asian Hayakawa (an ostensible “villain” who exudes more movie star charisma than anyone else onscreen) literally branding the caucasian Ward with a hot iron. The dramatic use of chiaroscuro lighting was way ahead of its time and anticipates the rise of German Expressionism a few years later.
18. Regeneration (Walsh, USA, 1915)
19. One A.M. (Chaplin, USA, 1917)
20. The Blue Bird (Tourneur, USA, 1918)
21. Tih Minh (Feuillade, France, 1918)
Jacques d’Athys, a French adventurer, returns to his home in Nice after an expedition to Indochina where he has picked up a Eurasian fiancee and a book that, unbeknownst to him, contains a coded message revealing the whereabouts of both secret treasures and government intelligence. This makes him the target of foreign spies, including a Marquise of mysterious origin, a Hindu hypnotist and an evil German doctor, who will stop at nothing to obtain the book. Louis Feuillade’s 12 chapter, 7 hour serial is overflowing with action, thrills, humor and romance and is a strong contender for the title of the most purely entertaining movie I have ever seen.
22. Blind Husbands (Von Stroheim, USA, 1919)
23. Broken Blossoms (Griffith, USA, 1919)
24. Madame DuBarry (Lubitsch, Germany, 1919)
Polish-born Pola Negri was a major international movie star and sex symbol during the silent era and Madame DuBarry, a biopic of Louis the XV’s mistress set (incongruously) against the backdrop of the French Revolution, is one of her finest star vehicles. Funny, tragic and sexually provocative for its time, this historical epic allowed German film studio UFA to break into the international market. Four years later, director Ernst Lubitsch would become the first of many German filmmakers to migrate to Hollywood (where he would achieve even greater fame).
25. The President (Dreyer, Denmark, 1919)
White City Cinema 