Army Life; or, How Soldiers Are Made: Mounted Infantry (1900) User Reviews

Army Life

[JoeytheBrit · 5/10 · 7 December 2009]

Robert Paul is a largely forgotten name today, but he was a major pioneer of British cinema, and was quick to grasp the commercial potential of cinema in ways that better known pioneers such as William Friese-Greene were not. He was more of a mechanic than a filmmaker making, with Birt Acres, his own camera on which to shoot films in 1895, and also Britain's first projector, the Animatograph, with which to screen them in 1896. Early in the 20th century he had a custom-made studio built in Muswell Hill.

This film is apparently a brief section of a 21 part film about army life made by Robert Paul with the support of the Commander-in-Chief. The film shows the King's mounted guard riding past the camera. In addition to financial reasons, it's possible that Paul was interested in filming these scenes because his brothers were serving in the Transvaal at the time.

Interesting as a discussion of what has been lost and forgotten in British cinema history

[bob the moo · 21 April 2007]

A single shot of the mounted infantry crossing a field is all that is supposed to be left of a documentary that reportedly was over an hour in length. Hardly long, I hear you say – would just fit into a Channel 4 evening slot if you made it a reality/gameshow type thing. However at the time the average length of films was more like a minute or two so this would have been an epic of sorts. Combine this with the degree of public interest in the military at the time and perhaps you can see why it is on this site despite being little more than a single shot now.

The focus of the documentary was to show what methods of training etc were used to turn a raw recruit into a fine British soldier and it was made by British pioneer RW Paul. Of course I cannot review the film because it no longer exists apart from this one fragment. The fragment is dull visually due to the nature of what it is but it is interesting viewing because it is a reminder of the important role that Britain played in early cinema and also the fact that, of thousands of films made in the UK in this period, only a few hundred have survived to be stored by the BFI.