6 /10 1 Votes
5.7/10 Letterboxd Produced by George Albert Smith Director George Albert Smith Cinematography George Albert Smith | 3.1/5 Mubi Directed by George Albert Smith Production
company G. A. Smith Producer George Albert Smith | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Distributed by Warwick Trading Company Release date September 1900 (1900-09) Running time 42 secs 10 min (DIRECTV) Initial release September 1900 (United Kingdom) Similar Grandma's Reading Glass, Let Me Dream Again, The Biter Bit, The Kiss in the Tunnel, Mary Jane's Mishap | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
As Seen Through a Telescope (AKA: The Professor and His Field Glass) is a 1900 British short silent comedy film, directed by George Albert Smith, featuring an elderly gentleman getting a glimpse of a woman's ankle through a telescope. The three-shot comedy, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "uses a similar technique to that which G.A. Smith pioneered in Grandma's Reading Glass (1900)," and although, "the editing is unsophisticated, the film does at least show a very early example of how to make use of point-of-view close-ups in the context of a coherent narrative (which is this film's main advance on Grandma's Reading Glass)." "Smith's experiments with editing," Brooke concludes, "were ahead of most contemporary film-makers, and in retrospect it can clearly be seen that he was laying the foundations of film grammar as we now understand it."
Contents
As seen through a telescope 1900 1st telescoped pov close up
Production
The film was shot in Furze Hill, Hove, England outside the entrance to St. Ann's Well Gardens, where Smith had his studio.
Synopsis
An old gentleman is shown on a village street, looking for something through a field glass. Suddenly, he levels the glass on a young couple coming up the road. The girl's shoe string came loose, and her companion volunteers to tie it. Here the scene changes, showing how it looks through the old man's glass. A very pretty ankle at short range. Scene changes back again and shows the old fellow tickled to death over the sight. The couple, who, by the way, caught "Peeping Tom," come toward him, and as the young man passes behind him, he knocks off his hat and kicks the stool on which he is sitting, from under him, making the old chap present a rather ludicrous appearance, as he sits in the street