Came The Dawn ... 1906
Locally, the trouble is we don’t know exactly when the first film was made. The late John Huntley, to whom I have decided to dedicate these pages (see inset), created the Huntley Film Archive, whose database of such early films is now accessible online. These works are identified merely by decade rather than by year, since often the exact year is uncertain, the films being dated by the informed guesswork of the HFA’s intrepid cataloguer. And, in keeping with film-archive practice when dealing with primitive films, the actual copyright titles are not given, only descriptive catalogue headings and numbers.
About John Huntley
These web-pages are dedicated to the late John Huntley (1921-2003), film enthusiast. I never met him, though we exchanged correspondence when I provided some info for one of his film books. He was a true film lover who was able to communicate his enthusiasm and experience to a modern generation. He had worked in British cinema in its heyday, at Denham Studios under Alexander Korda, as a music and sound-effects editor, and written early definitive textbooks on the techniques of film editing and film music, and on early British Technicolor films. He believed in cinema as an educational mass medium, and he also worked for the British Film Institute as regional-development officer until 1974, when it became too bureaucratic and elitist for his democratic instincts. To help preserve and make available early documentary film that he felt was in danger of being lost, in 1985 he founded the Huntley Film Archive in London, whose database of early films is now online. From 1974 on, he lectured and presented radio and tv programmes on British cinema, until shortly before his death age 82, from cancer.
The Huntley Film Archive does list some early films shot locally.
Film #35745, from the 1900s, is “probably Lulworth Cove, Dorset, a paddle steamer alights, passengers walk along a long walkway pontoon to the shore.” Film #11701 also shows “paddle steamers at Lulworth Cove.” Film #21455 is a 4-reel compilation Huntley used for tv programmes he presented. Reel One includes some footage of The Solent (Cowes Week 1913, a ‘faked’ Titanic and Lusitania, film stars at Southampton docks, etc.) Reel Two, on transport films, includes (again) a scene of Lulworth Cove in 1908, one of Bournemouth, and another of the Bournemouth Belle [train]. Film #21456, a compilation reel of 71 films from the 1890s and early 1900s, also includes footage of the Bournemouth Belle. This is undated but is alongside footage of Queen Victoria (died 1901) at Balmoral, the 1900 Paris Expo, the Boer War, and three famous early British on-location efforts: Birt Acres’s Derby [1896], R.W. Paul’s film of Brighton seafront [1896], and [A Daring] Daylight Robbery, a 1902 prototype chase melodrama.
So while there are candidates for local ‘firsts’ from the 1890s and 1900s, it remains difficult to say exactly when the first local footage was shot.
The earliest known local-interest tourist-promotion ‘scenic’ (a then-common genre) seems to have been Bournemouth (1911). It is catalogued [as AV131/3/V1] by Wessex Film and Sound Archive in Winchester, as follows: “Lifts in action on the cliffs on the sea front. Sea bathing in the sea. Close up shots of people in the sea, children and adults. People wading in the sea, ladies sitting in deckchairs on the beach. Children playing on the beach. Bungalows (beach huts) on the sea front with people sitting outside them. Pine forest at Branksome Chime with children playing in the forest. Houses at Alum Chine.” (This description indicates it also shows Poole, and may be a ‘first’ there as well.)
There is still the quesion of when was the first dramatic film made locally? The definitive answer is not yet known, but it probably lies in the work of Cecil Hepworth at Lulworth.
Lulworth Cove, one of Britain's early "repertory" filming locations. It was then a port of call, weather permitting, for paddle steamers - something which would have made it possible to transport crew and equipment directly to this then-remote location, where there was yet no modern road.
Hepworth's
Elsinore Castle was built atop the Lulworth cliffs, which can be
glimpsed in the background. (From the photo, the castle location
does not appear to be in the Cove itself, but on the outer sea-cliffs
somewhere near.) The film survives, and a clip showing
the Lulworth clifftop castle set was on view for years at the Museum
Of Moving Image in London, until the government closed it down.
A similar clip also appears in the 1996 documentary series Cinema
Europe: The Other Hollywood, with commentary by Kenneth Branagh
(which criticizes Hepworth's static style). You can view 4 clips
from the film, including the Ghost scene, via the BFI ScreenOnline
site here.
Geoff Brown
comments in his book All Our Yesterdays that "the Ghost was
let loose on the stones and boulders of the Dorset shore."
This poor-quality frame blowup of the ghost of Hamlet's father on
the foreshore doesn't give much of a clue where it was shot, since
the 1913 cliff-face would have eroded away since.
Hepworth's
Comin' Thro' The Rye, 1923 remake. The location here certainly isn't
Lulworth and doesn't appear to be elsewhere in Dorset (the closest
matchup would be just west of Milton Abbas).
Hepworth made a number of 'pastoral dramas', which are the best prospects for having exteriors filmed on his annual Lulworth excursions.
Further Information - Hepworth Picture Plays
Volumes 1-4 of Rachael Low's 7-volume The History Of British Film (1948-73) has details of his work - Hepworth was Chairman of the British Film Institute's History Committee, and reportedly helped with the research Low later drew on, though ironically his own 1951 memoir, Came The Dawn, is not considered reliable as to dates etc. There seems also to have been an 1985 TV documentary called Came the Dawn - The Story of Cecil Hepworth. There is now a website devoted to Hepworth, here. See also this site. The IMDB has a filmography, though the links don't lead to any locations info. Biographical and film details, including some stills or frame blowups, and video clips, are available via the BFI bio-page, which has links to some of his productions.
The most likely prospect for the first dramatic films shot locally
is the work of Cecil Hepworth (1874-1953). Hepworth was a pioneer
British producer, scriptwriter, director, editor, studio owner,
inventor, artist, and later lecturer on film. His first hit was
coverage of Queen Victoria's funeral in 1901. This may well be the
one mentioned in the Huntley documentary reel mentioned above.
As Roy Armes's A Critical History Of British Cinema notes,
Hepworth was also a pioneer of location filming and "made
annual excursions to Lulworth Cove" as his favourite
English location - making it probably British cinema's first "repertory"
locations area. (As indicated above, it had often appeared in early
'scenics'.)
Unfortunately most Hepworth films were lost when he went bankrupt
in 1924, and we don’t know when the first one shot at Lulworth
was. We do know that he became successful enough after his 1905
chase melodrama Rescued By Rover became his greatest hit
to afford location trips. So the best guess for the start of his
Lulworth filming is 1906, when he first had the funds.
The one well-known Lulworth film is the £10,000 1913 feature-length
production of Hamlet, produced by Hepworth and directed
by Hay Plumb. For this, he built a plaster-and-lathe Elsinore Castle
atop the cliffs at Lulworth Cove.
According to the film’s
own publicity, ‘on the cliffs of Lulworth Cove is being
built a magnificent castle, which is to be an exact replica of the
famous old pile still standing in Denmark. This is being erected
absolutely regardless of expense, the only condition laid down for
the builders being that it shall be an exact copy of the original.’
In an era when films were made for £100, this Gaumont production,
which featured its financier, stage-star Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson,
cost a staggering £10,000. Hamlet was almost the
first full-length feature shot in England - that distinction went
to Hepworth's David Copperfield, made the same year, one
of Hepworth's five Dickens adaptations. It also still survives,
though no location information is available yet.
Hepworth's company, Hepworth Picture Plays, reportedly visited Lulworth
annually until 1922, suggesting there were at least 15 locally-shot
films - possibly many more, for the company produced dozens of films
a year. However he also filmed elsewhere, other productions being
shot in Brighton and Bognor.
The year 1923 was the culmination of Hepworth's own directorial
career, when he remade his 1916 Comin' Thro' The Rye. Hepworth
regarded this as his finest work, though film histories cite it
as a quintessential example of the sentimental Victorian romance
genre. (A clip of it is seen in the 1957 comedy The Smallest
Show On Earth, where the elderly staff of the old fleapit cinema
tearfully watch silent films on their evenings off.) That, however,
was the last hurrah for Hepworth Picture Plays, bankruptcy following
the next year, his films melted down for their silver content.
Despite
making many early 'trick' films, and his greatest hit being a chase
melodrama (his 1905 Rescued By Rover), Hepworth preferred
"frontal staging with action played out in pantomimic gestures
in a single long-shot tableaux."
Hepworth was an innovator in many ways, developing the star system
in Britain, even making films with synchronised sound in the 'silent'
era. However he had one blind spot: he obstinately refused to use
straight cuts between shots, saying these were 'visually disruptive,'
instead filming scenes in single shots and using fadeouts to black
between shots, even in Rescued By Rover (these being cut
from reissue prints). This made his films increasingly seem dated.
The BFI
ScreenOnline bio adds, "His interest remained in scenic
photography and he brought this pictorial style into his films.
... His presentation style barely changed from the early melodramas
to the features of the 1920s, but it was a specific style which
he deliberately fostered. ... He was justifiably proud of his place
in cinema history, and toured in later life with a lecture programme
telling the story of the birth of cinema. As Variety said of him
on 19 May 1922, he was apt to allow the artist in his nature to
conquer the commercialism of the showman, but his pictures were
always worth watching."
His autobiography was published just before his death in 1953, called
Came The Dawn. ("Always
I have striven for beauty, for pictorial meaning and effect.")
Given that his work is criticised by those who have seen his films
for being more picturesque than dramatic, these films would be rich
in scenic background ... if only surviving prints could be located,
for Hepworth's own print library did not.
Matthew Sweet's studio
history Shepperton Babylon explains: "when Cecil
Hepworth went bankrupt in 1924, his entire back catalogue of negatives
was bought by a dealer who melted them down into resin for water-proofing
the canvas of aircraft wings. Two thousand films, which had showcased
Britain's first generation of stars, were liquefied ... Next time
you see a Spitfire in a museum, run your fingers over its skin.
You might be touching a vanished masterpiece."
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The New Forest, with its Gypsy presence, uncultivated heathlands and several thousand free-ranging ponies, attracted film-makers early on.
As both Bournemouth and The New Forest have attracted film-makers from early on as scenic locations, there are other possible shoots where local filming details are not yet ascertained.
The New Forest has been a favourite of filmmakers from at least 1903, when the Warwick Trading Company (then a market leader) filmed the short "actuality" Scenes Of A New Forest Pony Fair there. British cinema pioneer GA Smith, who was interested in mesmerism, joined a New Forest religious commune called the Girlingites, and may have filmed there in the 1900s. British film pioneer J. Stuart Blackton (1875-1941) shot scenes for his 1921 Prizmacolour epic The Virgin Queen at Beaulieu Abbey before returning to Hollywood. A few early literary works part-set in Bournemouth were filmed in the silent era, location details as yet unknown. An adaptation was shot in 1922 of Compton McKenzie’s bestselling pre-WWI novel Sinister Street, set partly in the Bournemouth area. Also filmed was The Wrong Box by Lloyd Osbourne & RL Stevenson, which they co-wrote after leaving Bournemouth in 1887, and is partly set there and in the New Forest.
According to a BFI film history, in the 1920s an American producer scouting England for the ideal place for a “British Hollywood” announced the Bournemouth area would be ideal. Again, we have no further details of any followup, but these may emerge in time.
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