A policeman spots a fire in a home He tries the windows, but they are locked. He runs to the nearest fire station. Will they save the residents?
It's a very impressive movie for 1901, shot in five scenes. Each of the sequences begins with a life-threatening situation: can the policeman get into the house and help the occupants? Can the fire brigade get the equipment on the street? Can they get to the house in time? .... and so forth. The camera placement is simple and the editing is, by modern standards, simple. Time is linear within the movie; cross-cutting has not yet shown up. Even so, it plays very well, even today.
James Williamson, who directed and produced and, presumably edited this movie, was born in 1855 and 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.
It's a very impressive movie for 1901, shot in five scenes. Each of the sequences begins with a life-threatening situation: can the policeman get into the house and help the occupants? Can the fire brigade get the equipment on the street? Can they get to the house in time? .... and so forth. The camera placement is simple and the editing is, by modern standards, simple. Time is linear within the movie; cross-cutting has not yet shown up. Even so, it plays very well, even today.
James Williamson, who directed and produced and, presumably edited this movie, was born in 1855 and 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.