Document View

Mason reviews The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon: Edwardian Britain on Film.

Enlarge 200% Enlarge 400%

The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon Edwardian Britain on Film DVD: 176mins B/w and colour Ratio 4x3 TV £19.99 BOOK: VanessaToulmin (Editor), Simon Popple (Editor), Patrick Russell (Editor) BFI (British Film Institute) Publishing 288pp £15.99 ISBN: 1844570460

FOUR MILLION PEOPLE watched the BBC television programmes, The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyan: Edwardian Britain on Film, broadcast in January and now available on DVD. This is probably more than saw the 800 short films made by the two Lancashire photographers between 1900 and 1913, when they were shot and shown (sometimes on the same day) at local fairs, show grounds, halls and early cinemas. Rather than speak about a Lost World, I'd say 'rediscovered' or even 'new'. Their audiences may have enjoyed the immediacy of the images presented to them, but perhaps with a different focus to our gaze a hundred years on. What does this discovery mean for historians?

Enlarge 200% Enlarge 400%

These films give us a documentary record of the Edwardian period. But they are not documentaries in the meaning we now accept. They were made with the knowledge, interest and varying degrees of participation of those portrayed. For this reason, they set up a different relationship with the viewer from a modern cinema audience and from which it is difficult to escape. This is a clue to their fascination and why many people found themselves moved earleir this year when these images were shown for the first time in more than ninety years.

What did the modern audience see? Men and women entering and leaving factories: local religions processions, temperance demonstrations and marches featuring Boy Scouts, the Boys Brigade and other children's activities; crowds at sporting fixtures or the seaside; and (a reminder of how much has been lost to the car) weekend crowds in town centres. Small children from St Joseph's School in Blackburn, girls mostly in white smocks segregated from boys with caps, march eight abreast gazing steadfastly into the camera. The first women to receive degrees from Birmingham University walk in procession informally but with great dignity, behind medical students clowning with medical bones or waving at the camera. Men coming out of factories or collieries pause to stare at the camera, whilst others seem more interested in the reactions of others or engage in mock argument for its benefit.

These are, on the face of it, the standard fare of conventional newsreel material, poorly-thought-out documentaries and the modern home video. Yet these images are different. Even within a single frame there are several reactions to the knowledge that the subjects are being filmed. A man will grin or wave his hat. Another will pause to stare into the camera, whilst a third will pass quickly or disappear to return a few seconds later. Others will speak to friends. By setting up their camera in the way they did, Mitchell and Kenyon captured individual reactions within the crowds the) filmed with a clarity' beyond the reach of Eisenstein or Gance. This, together with the novelty of film at the time, accounts for their spontaneity and their grip on our attention.

Mitchell and Kenyon enjoyed a direct relationship with their audience. If the events filmed weren't of immediate interest to a specific local population, there was no poinl in making them. Shots of a religious parade in Wigan were of no interest to an audience in Glasgow. Despite its lack of prior knowledge of film, the audience held the upper hand. They were the media, and apart from some incursions into storytelling or restaging local crime or other news events, the focus had to be their own activities. That is why the coverage of the films is so complete and why we are so drawn to it.

As filming took place, cards were distributed giving details of when and where they would be shown. Many would pay to see this new form of entertainment because of its novelty or oui of curiosity. Others would corne for the experience of seeing themselves on the screen. These films, therefore, predate cinema going in the sense that we now understand it. They were advertised and mostly screened only in the town or district in which the events took place. They were commissioned by fairground owners and showmen, and provide a bridge between local entertainment and silent melodrama and comedy.

There are limitations. Only with scenes of women gutting fish on the quayside at North Shields or in the Irish images from Dublin or Wexford does poverty show through. Mitchell and Kenyon present their subjects in a favourable, relaxed context, coming out of the factory gates, participating in religious or civic processions or in their leisure time at sporting events or the seaside. A woman at the annual Easter egg rolling ceremony in Avenham Park, Preston, props up a reluctant baby in its pram to give the camera a better view. Young boys, who swarm over many of these films, run in front of a moving tram on which the camera is perched to give a view of Morecambe promenade. Whole crowds join in the fun - or choose not to as spectators react to the camera or stage small-scale events for its benefit.

Mitchell and Kenyon ran for thirteen years, longer than the silent film after the First World War. These earlier entertainments therefore must have had some effect on what was to come. They are among the first to establish precise claims on popular and local audiences. Did they help to make cinema going acceptable, and did the fairgrounds and shows at which they were shown offer better venues than the grim picture houses of Northern towns with wooden benches nailed to sloping wooden floors, that rarely appear in books of cinema architecture? A scene from 1901 advertises Sedgwick's Bioscope 'living pictures passion play', combining the older lantern views with new 'animated' film, hence emphasising the link between the two.

Picture-going was higher in northwest England and Scotland during the 1930s and 1940s than any other part of Britain; this may reflect the relative poverty of these areas. But it may be no accident that the grandly titled Mancunian Film Corporation turned out cheap comedies for Northern audiences during these years. Mancunian remains the only successful attempt outside the southeast to make popular, commercial films. Mitchell and Kenyon may also have originated the 'top ical' newsreel, a magazine-style production popular in the 1920s usually concentrating on a single issue and offering editorial comment.

It would be a shame if the discovery of these films fails to spark wider debate. Peter Worden, a local historian in Blackburn, donated the 800 reels to the British Film Institute after he had saved them when a demolition contractor tipped him off. This gift increases the amount of early British footage in the BFI's archives by about 20 per cent. Unlike modern media ownership, which tends to set its own agenda, these films belonged to its stars, who were also its audience. Not only documentary filmmakers will have to think again.

John Mason

The BFI will release Electric Edwardians, a second Mitchell & Kenyon DVD, in May.