Grandma's Reading Glass | 1900 | Short, Trick film

Title: Grandma's Reading Glass | 1900 | Short, Trick film Director: George Albert Smith. Studio: G.A. Smith. Starring: Harold Smith. Release Date: November 1900. Runtime: 1 Format: Silent, black-and-white. Country: United Kingdom. Language: Silent. Genres: Short, Comedy, Trick film. --- Chapters: 00:00:00 Opening: Newspaper close-up 00:00:10 Watch mechanism 00:00:30 Bird in cage 00:00:50 Grandmother’s eye 00:01:05 Kitten --- Summary: A young boy borrows his grandmother’s magnifying glass and examines the world immediately around him: a newspaper advertisement, a watch’s workings, a caged bird, his grandmother’s eye, and a kitten. Each object appears in an irised, circular close-up that alternates with a wider domestic view. The film is celebrated for its early use of interpolated point-of-view close-ups, demonstrating how cutting between a medium shot and a subjective detail could guide audience attention and create meaning—an important step in the evolution of cinematic language. --- Background: Produced at the turn of the century by Brighton School innovator George Albert Smith, Grandma’s Reading Glass employed a black circular mask to simulate the boy’s viewpoint, helping the irised close-ups stand out within the scene. The film was long thought lost after a 1912 fire at Warwick Trading Company but was rediscovered in 1960 in the collection of Danish filmmaker Peter Elfelt. Its techniques were refined by Smith in As Seen Through a Telescope , released around the same time. --- Trivia: The boy in the film is commonly identified as the director’s son, Harold Smith. The newspaper close-up includes an advertisement for Bovril, highlighting the everyday subject matter chosen for the film’s magnified views. Close-ups were created by photographing objects through a black circular mask placed in front of the lens, producing the distinctive vignetted image. Contemporaries noted the film’s pioneering alternation between medium shot and point-of-view close-up, an early instance of editing for subjective detail. After being presumed lost due to a 1912 studio fire, surviving material surfaced decades later in 1960, expanding access to this early experiment in film grammar. An authorship dispute has occasionally attributed the film to Arthur Melbourne-Cooper; while some institutions accepted the claim, archives such as the BFI have retained Smith’s credit. --- Public Domain / Rights: Original Release: November 1900. Original Studio / Distributor: G.A. Smith / Warwick Trading Company. Copyright Status: Unknown Renewal: Unknown --- Hashtags: GrandmasReadingGlass GeorgeAlbertSmith SilentFilm ShortFilm EarlyCinema BritishCinema FilmHistory 1900 This video was sourced from Internet Archive. Originally uploaded by George Albert Smith. https://archive.org/details/grandmas-reading-glass-1900-directed-by-george-albert-smith