| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Video - The 1904 London of Sherlock Holmes |
| 2008-10-24 |
| Movie footage of London shot in 1904. This clip is an excerpt from a 12-minute long video that was made as a travelogue to lure visitors from Australia. It is a fascinating and all too brief glimpse into the vibrant, teeming London of Sherlock Holmes. The reel was recently discovered in an archive in Canberra. "It's a rather clever mixture of what we would expect to see - such as the Embankment, Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square - but it also has these wonderful close ups of individuals. "There's an old lady sleeping rough on a bench, children encouraging a dog to swim in the Thames, children paddling in one of the ponds in St James's Park." But some things never change. "There's a wonderful shot of roadworks on the Strand," he said. "The catalogue says, 'Street up as usual'. Road works were obviously a common feature of London in 1904 too." Other scenes show roads packed with horse-drawn traffic, the city "absolutely teeming with people", fish traders at Billingsgate Market and shoe-shiners in the West End. The footage, shot of 35mm film, also shows subtle insights into life such as the way people walked, he added. The academic, professor of film and media history at Birkbeck College in London, said the film, called Living London, was shot by pioneering Anglo-American film-maker Charles Urban. It was a big hit in Australia with audiences who had either emigrated or had never seen the land of their forefathers. "It wasn't easy to hop on a plane then," he said. An advertisement for the film displayed in small-town Australia read: "Sites along a route on the most important thoroughfare in London, not merely showing street scenes but incredible 'Snapshots' of the various human types, their different occupations and pleasures." Prof Christie said it was a "fascinating panorama of life in London at the beginning of the last century". The fragment was probably only about a quarter of the whole film, he said. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #2 Where's all the Muslims? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-10-24 18:38 |
| #1 That is just too cool. |
| Posted by: Mike 2008-10-24 18:35 |