| The Child Stealers | |
|---|---|
 Screenshot | |
| Directed by | William Barker |
| Starring | Kenneth Barker, Alfred Collins |
Production company | |
Release date |
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Running time | 5 min. |
| Country | United Kingdom |
The Child Stealers also known as The Kidnapped Child or Child Stealing is a 1904 British silent crime film about kidnapping, directed by William Barker and produced by the Warwick Trading Company. [1]
As a mother enters a store, she leaves her child outside in a perambulator. Another woman standing nearby quickly snatches the child out of the carriage. Soon afterwards, another mother is playing with two children in the park, and when she leaves one of them unattended, her child is also seized by the same woman. These are only two of a number of children that an unscrupulous couple has captured for their own purposes. [2]
This is the first film directed by William Barker, who was then working for the Warwick Trading Company. The film has been distributed in the United Kingdom by the same company. It has been distributed in the United States by the Edison Manufacturing Company [2] and by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company [3] who has registered it for copyright on June 9, 1904. [4]
The film is composed of 6 scenes, all of them including only one shot with the exception of the last one which includes two shots showing the continuation of the action from two different angles. Five shots are filmed on location, while two are filmed on constructed sets. The five first shots are wide shots filmed with a static camera, but the movements of the actors sometimes lead to full or medium shots. In the last shot, the camera pans to follow the actors running towards it.
Child stealers has been identified as having made popular in America films about kidnapping, other noticeable example of this new genre being in 1905 Rescued by Rover and in 1908 the first film directed by D.W. Griffith, The Adventures of Dollie . [5] It has also been mentioned as one of the first films where a scene is filmed from two different angles. [6] and as an example of the "preponderance of sordid reality" present in early British drama films. [3]
The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American silent film made by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It follows a gang of outlaws who hold up and rob a steam locomotive at a station in the American West, flee across mountainous terrain, and are finally defeated by a posse of locals. The short film draws on many sources, including a robust existing tradition of Western films, recent European innovations in film technique, the play of the same name by Scott Marble, the popularity of train-themed films, and possibly real-life incidents involving outlaws such as Butch Cassidy.
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Edwin Stanton Porter was an American film pioneer, most famous as a producer, director, studio manager and cinematographer with the Edison Manufacturing Company and the Famous Players Film Company. Of over 250 films created by Porter, his most important include: What Happened on Twenty-third Street, New York City (1901); Jack and the Beanstalk (1902); Life of an American Fireman (1903); The Great Train Robbery (1903); The European Rest Cure (1904); The Kleptomaniac (1905); Life of a Cowboy (1906); Rescued from an Eagle's Nest (1908); and The Prisoner of Zenda (1913).
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