A Victorian Lady in Her Boudoir

In cinema's infancy, many of the productions were minute-long documentaries about mundane topics. They were known as actuality cinema. An example was Esmé Collings's 1896 short "A Victorian Lady in Her Boudoir", depicting a woman undressing (only it turns out that she's wearing something underneath). It was probably scandalous in its day, looking as it did like soft-core porn, but nowadays its nothing special. To be certain, Collings only made a few shorts in less than a year and then moved on to other professions, so this movie isn't even a footnote. It's not a bad movie, just nothing of which to take note.

I wonder if anyone in cinema's infancy envisioned the likes of "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure".

A properly dressed young woman takes off several layers of clothing. At the end of a minute of rapid undressing, she is still wearing a long undergarment that clothes her fully.

This is one of few surviving movies of Albert 'Esme' Collings. He was born in 1859, filmed about two dozen movies in 1896, and lived until 1936. He went into business with William Friese-Greene about 1890, worked as a photographer until about 1906 and then retired to paint.

Although this is of some interest as early soft-core pornography and shows the good composition that would be expected of a professional photographer, there isn't much else to say. It, and Mr. Collings remain a minor footnote in the history of movies, with a single entry in the index.