Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

one, showing the 35mm prints of 68mm originals from the NFTVA and
NFM collections. The essence of such programmes must be variety, and
there is always a danger of boring the audience with a programme of
films by one company or all of the same kind. But the timing was just
right, and the show built up to a fine climax with some outstanding
NFM prints including Pope Leo XIII blessing the audience, scenes from
the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, and an exhilarating view of a speeding train
from another train moving just ahead of it. An amazing view from a
moving tram along Ealing Broadway, London (which came from a private
collection), made a great ending for a London audience. We made a
point of ending each show, if possible, with a special item or surprise.
The war programme was the best attended after the Lumière show. The
film historian Stephen Bottomore gave an informative opening presentation
on the first war cameramen; the programme had as its centrepiece
the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, though it was noticeable how very
few of the films showed any sort of actual military activity at all, making
W.K.L. Dickson’s view of the retreat of the British from Spion Kop all the
more extraordinary; one of the great early film scoops. Perhaps the most
interesting aspect of the programme was the audience reaction to the
‘fake’ war films on show. It is common to express surprise that anyone in
the contemporary audience would have been fooled by such crude recreations.
It was remarkable then that some members of the sophisticated
NFT audience had to ask the lecturer which films they were seeing were
genuine and which fake. One person, perhaps not blessed with perfect
eyesight, came up afterwards and thanked us for showing film of the
Spithead naval review of 1897 in which he had recognised unique film
of a particular boat in which he was interested. In fact we had shown an
Edison recreation with models of a naval incident in the Russo-Japanese
war of 1905 in a rather unclear 16mm paper print. Perhaps the audience
has not changed all that much in the past 100 years.
The least successful show was Sport and Recreation, because the audience
interested in sport were not interested in the general scenes of
travel that filled out the programme, which in any case became a little
too much the programme where everything was placed that did not fit
elsewhere. A particularly awkward moment came when it was discovered
that someone was secretly and illicitly filming the sports films from the
front row. A very difficult situation to deal with when also trying to comment
on films that are passing by in thirty seconds. The highlight was
scenes from the James Corbett-Bob Fitzsimmons world heavyweight
boxing contest of 1897, in widescreen format, though sadly missing the
essential knockout. The home movies of the Passmore family, dating
from 1902 but allowed to slip into our Victorian net on account of their
great charm, made a delightful conclusion to the programme.
The final Discoveries show was really three short programmes put
together, though the formula worked. We opened with a reel of unidentified
films – always a risk since there is less to engage the audience, but
one may hope for clues to identification, and it is good to put such films
back into the collective consciousness. A selection of scientific and med-
67 Journal of Film Preservation / 53 / 1996