IMDb RATING
4.8/10
141
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- TriviaAs of August 2010, this film is presumed lost.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Silent Britain (2006)
Featured review
Interesting as a discussion of what has been lost and forgotten in British cinema history
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.
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.
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- bob the moo
- Apr 21, 2007
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- Army Life
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Top Gap
By what name was Army Life; or, How Soldiers Are Made: Mounted Infantry (1900) officially released in Canada in English?
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