How It Feels to Be Run Over

Last updated

How It Feels to Be Run Over
Directed by Cecil M. Hepworth
Produced byCecil M. Hepworth
Starring May Clark
Cecil M. Hepworth
CinematographyCecil M. Hepworth
Edited byCecil M. Hepworth
Production
company
Release date
July 1900
Running time
1 minute
CountryUnited Kingdom
Language Silent Film

How It Feels to Be Run Over is a one-minute British silent trick film, made in 1900, and directed by Cecil M. Hepworth. As in other instances of the very earliest films, the film presents the audience with the images of a shocking experience, without further narrative exposition. [1]

Contents

Plot summary

A coach is coming, and moves out of the frame at one side of the field of view. Soon after, an approaching car veers off course and moves straight to the viewer (the camera). As it approaches, the occupants wave frantically, hoping to stave off the impending collision. At the moment the car fills the entire frame the film cuts to title cards that bear the text "Oh, mother will be pleased". [2]

Cast

Missing Intertitle

In the original film, the intertitle says, "Oh, mother will be pleased". When the footage was found, it was missing the "Mother" intertitle. It just read, "Oh, will be pleased."

See also

Related Research Articles

The year 1900 in film involved some significant events.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cinematography</span> Art of motion picture photography

Cinematography is the art of motion picture photography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cecil Court</span> Pedestrian street with Victorian shop-frontages in London

Cecil Court is a pedestrian street with Victorian shop-frontages in Westminster, England, linking Charing Cross Road and St Martin's Lane. Since the 1930s, it has been known as the new Booksellers' Row.

<i>Cul-de-sac</i> (1966 film) 1966 film by Roman Polanski

Cul-de-sac is a 1966 British black comedy psychological thriller film directed by Roman Polanski, written by Polanski and Gérard Brach, and starring Donald Pleasence, Françoise Dorléac, Lionel Stander, Jack MacGowran, Iain Quarrier, Geoffrey Sumner, Renée Houston, William Franklyn, Trevor Delaney, and Marie Kean. It also features Jacqueline Bisset in a small role, in her second film appearance. Polanski's second English-language feature, it follows two injured American gangsters who take refuge in the remote island castle of a young British couple in the north of England, spurring a series of mind games and violent altercations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cecil Hepworth</span> British film director, producer and screenwriter

Cecil Milton Hepworth was a British film director, producer and screenwriter. He was among the founders of the British film industry and continued making films into the 1920s at his Hepworth Studios. In 1923 his company Hepworth Picture Plays went into receivership.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Actuality film</span> Non-fiction film genre that uses footage of real events

Actuality film is a non-fiction film genre that uses footage of real events, places, and things, in a similar way to documentary film. Unlike documentaries, actuality films are not structured into a larger narrative or coherent whole. In practice, actuality films preceded the emergence of the documentary. During the era of early cinema, actualities—usually lasting no more than a minute or two and usually assembled together into a program by an exhibitor—were just as popular and prominent as their fictional counterparts. The line between "fact" and "fiction" was not as prominent in early cinema as it would become once documentaries became the predominant non-fiction filmmaking form. Actuality as a film genre is related to still photography.

Walton Studios, previously named Hepworth Studios and Nettlefold Studios, was a film production studio in Walton-on-Thames in Surrey, England. Hepworth was a pioneering studio in the early 20th century and released the first film adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

<i>Rescued by Rover</i> 1905 British film

Rescued by Rover is a 1905 British short silent drama film, directed by Lewin Fitzhamon, about a dog who leads its master to his kidnapped baby, which was the first to feature the Hepworth's family dog Blair in a starring role; following the release, the dog became a household name and he is considered to be the first dog film star. The film, which according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "marks a key stage in the medium's development from an amusing novelty to the seventh art," and, "possibly the only point in film history when British cinema unquestionably led the world," was an advance in filming techniques, editing, production and story telling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">May Clark</span> British actress

May Clark was an English silent film actress turned cinematographer. She played Alice in the 1903 film Alice in Wonderland, the first film adaptation of Lewis Carroll's 1865 children's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trick film</span> Short silent films designed to feature innovative special effects

In the early history of cinema, trick films were short silent films designed to feature innovative special effects.

<i>Helen of Four Gates</i> 1920 film

Helen of Four Gates is a 1920 British silent melodrama film directed by cinema pioneer Cecil Hepworth and starring Alma Taylor, James Carew, and Gerald Ames.

<i>Explosion of a Motor Car</i> Early British short comedy film

Explosion of a Motor Car is a 1900 British silent comic trick film, directed by Cecil M. Hepworth, featuring an exploding automobile scattering the body parts of its driver and passenger. "One of the most memorable of early British trick films" according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "was one of the first films to play with the laws of physics for comic effect." It features one of the earliest known uses in a British film of the stop trick technique discovered by French filmmaker Georges Méliès in 1896, and also includes one of the earliest film uses of comedy delay – later to be widely used as a convention in animated films – where objects take much longer to fall to the ground than they would do in reality. It is included in the BFI DVD Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers and a clip is featured in Paul Merton's interactive guide to early British silent comedy How They Laughed on the BFI website.

<i>Lily of the Alley</i> 1924 film

Lily of the Alley is a 1924 British silent film drama directed by Henry Edwards, who also starred in the film with his wife Chrissie White. Lily of the Alley was filmed in 1922 and given trade showings in early 1923, but its general release to cinemas was delayed until February 1924 due to various problems within the British film industry at the time.

The Beggar's Deceit is a 1900 British short film directed by Cecil Hepworth. The film is a comedy sketch shot from a static camera position, with the composition divided into thirds: on the left the beggar, in the centre the pavement and pedestrians, and to the right the road and vehicle traffic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Violet Hopson</span> British actress

Violet Hopson was an actress and producer who achieved fame on the British stage and in British silent films. She was born Elma Kate Victoria Karkeek in Port Augusta, South Australia on 16 December 1887. Violet Hopson was her stage name, while in childhood she was known as Kate or Kitty to her family.

Hepworth Picture Plays was a British film production company active during the silent era. Founded in 1897 by the cinema pioneer Cecil Hepworth, it was based at Walton Studios west of London.

Lewin "Fitz" Fitzhamon was a British filmmaker, who worked as Cecil Hepworth's principal director in the early decades of the twentieth century. His best-known film is Rescued by Rover (1905). Other directing credits include An Englishman Trip to Paris from London (1904), That Fatal Sneeze (1907), The Man and his Bottle (1908) and A New Hat for Nothing (1910). In total, he directed around 400 films.

How to Stop a Motor Car is a 1902 British fantasy-comedy trick film directed by Percy Stow. Cecil M. Hepworth, T.C. Hepworth and Claude Whitten acted in the film. It was released in USA as Policeman and Automobile.

Une indigestion, sold in the United States as Up-to-Date Surgery and in Britain as Sure Cure for Indigestion, and also known as Chirurgie fin de siècle, is a 1902 French short silent film by Georges Méliès.

<i>The Train Wreckers</i> 1905 film

The Train Wreckers is a 1905 American silent drama film, directed by Edwin S. Porter showing how the daughter of a railway switchman and lover of a locomotive engineer is defeating outlaws trying to derail a train.

References

  1. "In praise of... the wow factor at the movies" (editorial). The Guardian . 19 November 2009. Retrieved 29 September 2011.
  2. Sarah Street (2008). British national cinema (2nd ed.). Routledge. p. 43. ISBN   978-0-415-38422-3.

Further reading