A man reads an interesting book at breakfast. It absorbs him so completely that he pours coffee into his hat. He continues reading it as he walks into the street, colliding with various people..... and a steam roller in this amusing variation on Walter Booth's AN EXTRAORDINARY CAB ACCIDENT.
The director this movie, James Williamson, came into film-making not through photography, but because he ran a chemist shop -- where he presumably developed film -- and expanded into selling photographic equipment, in Hove, quite near George A. Smith's St Ann's Well Pleasure Garden. Besides shooting and directing his own films, he patented a couple of devices useful for film production, founded a company to produce photographic equipment that was active at least until the Second World War, and lived until 1933.
The IMDb trivia for this movie notes that it is considered to be the earliest slapstick film -- obviously no one has ever heard of at least three version of THE MILLER AND THE SWEEP released in 1897.
The director this movie, James Williamson, came into film-making not through photography, but because he ran a chemist shop -- where he presumably developed film -- and expanded into selling photographic equipment, in Hove, quite near George A. Smith's St Ann's Well Pleasure Garden. Besides shooting and directing his own films, he patented a couple of devices useful for film production, founded a company to produce photographic equipment that was active at least until the Second World War, and lived until 1933.
The IMDb trivia for this movie notes that it is considered to be the earliest slapstick film -- obviously no one has ever heard of at least three version of THE MILLER AND THE SWEEP released in 1897.