Rescued by Rover

Rescued By Rover is indeed a milestone in cinematic history in so many ways. Today's audiences may not appreciate the simple story of a dog sniffing out a family's missing baby, but there are several historical aspects of this 1905 film worth noting.

If you somewhat familiar with earlier films coming from Biograph and Edison Studios (the primary film production companies making movies in the early 1900's), a large sampling are "chase" films such as "The Escape Lunatic," "The Moonshiner" and "Personal," all released a year earlier. Since film language was still evolving, these older movies would follow a long string of events which wouldn't conclude until every participant was completely passing by the camera.

In the Hepworth's film one notices the crisp clips that didn't devolve into seemingly unending segments of people going through their paces. Slicing 20 shots into the movie, Cecil Hepworth and primary director Lewin Fitzhammon created a natural flow so appreciated by today's standards. The scenes of the dog tracking the baby zipped along, cutting out unnecessary elongation of extended scenes. Maybe having an animal, with a short attention span, required these scenes to be short. Whatever the reason, Rescued established a new way of editing at a much faster pace.

This was also one of the first movies to use Peter Cooper-Hewitt's new Mercury Vapor Lamps to illuminate an interior movie set. Previously, filming had to be done under the sun in open air or glass studios. One can see the lights plugged in and used during the attic scenes where the drunken woman is with the baby.

Rescue today is primarily known for being the first movie to portray as its hero an animal. The loving family dog of the Hepworth's, Blair, is the star here, a pioneering showcase of an animal carrying the story, a la a Lassie or a Flipper. In addition, the film, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the cheapest movie ever produced, tabbing at a minuscule $37.40. Much of the expense I would imagine was paying for two of the actors, the baby's kidnapper and a soldier.

One last noteworthy aspect is that the film existing today was likely not the original one. Rover was so successful that the Hepworths wore out two other negatives making hundreds of prints for a demanding public and had to reshoot the scenes. The print seen here is likely the third effort of making a new negative for reprints.

I'd like to correct the first user comment saying that DW Griffith's influences are easily seen in Rescued by Rover. DW Griffith's first film was in 1908, 4 years after Rescued by Rover. Rescued by Rover shows how directors showed spatial continuity to audiences who were used to seeing overlapping shots. Audiences were very simple during that time and this film helped shape the way an audience watches a film.

Rescued by Rover is really only worth watching for its influence on film. The story is extremely basic and certainly not as suspenseful as it would have been in the early 1900s

The story of "Rescued By Rover" is simple, but it's told quite well for its time. There is good action, good continuity from one scene to the next, and most of the shots are carried off well. It takes a somewhat predictable (and perhaps implausible) story and gives it energy, using occasional cross-cutting and mixing some indoor and outdoor scenes.

The story is the kind of melodrama that was very common in the earliest years of narrative films, but it also features some imaginative touches in the details. Most of the characters are rather plain, so the dog is the liveliest member of the cast. It was probably rather an achievement to get "Rover" to behave so well, and his actions come across as quite believable.

While the story is of a now-familiar kind, it was probably more novel at the time, and in any case this remains a worthwhile example of rather good early story-telling technique.

The opening shot is that of Rover sitting near the baby of the family, probably just to establish that there is a close and protective relationship there.

Next the nurse is seen taking the baby for a stroll in his carriage. A woman comes up to the nurse and begs for money and is refused. When the nurse's attention is diverted, the angry woman steals the baby. The nurse is rightfully distraught and tells the mother. Rover overhears and goes out to search for the baby. In one of the first cases on film of a dog stereotyping he first searches the local tenement because he assumes a poor person did this. Not being a cop he can just bust down door after door looking until he comes upon the baby. The kidnapper shoos the dog away then gets drunk and goes to sleep. The dog then goes to get the parents so they can retrieve the baby.

It really was all in the family here. Cecil Hepworth directed the film and Mrs. Hepworth wrote the script. Cecil, his wife, and their baby star as the family in the film. Blair, who plays Rover, was the Hepworth family dog. Hepworth continued making films into the 1920s but could not make the transition into longer films with more complex narratives and his business went bankrupt in 1924.

This film does a good job of building suspense - the audience does not know where the kidnapper has taken the child or what she wants with her.

That was quite an amazing dog. He is smarter than any of the humans in this little film. When some really weird woman kidnaps a baby while the nursemaid is making whoopee with a police officer, Rover listens, then goes in search of the little girl. He also has the ability to communicate with humans. Obviously, this is pure poppycock when it comes to reality.