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What is particularly notable in archive footage filmed by tourists and other
visitors to Liverpool in the first part of the 20th century is the extent to
which shots of the docks, River Mersey and waterfront landscape outnumber those
of other parts of the city. Electrical Exhibition provides a good illustration
of this. It was filmed in the 1930s by an amateur filmmaker on holiday with his
family in Liverpool and Southport, and the 'tourist gaze' that is revealed in
the Liverpool sequences is one firmly trained on activity on and around the
Mersey, with a selection of panoramic views of the docks and river taken
from ferries or from the dockside Overhead Railway - or 'Dockers Umbrella', as
it was known. The filmmaker seems particularly impressed by the sheer scale of
the industrial infrastructure of the docks.
The Overhead Railway, which opened in 1893 to serve the port city's expanding
system of docks, quickly established itself as a popular tourist attraction,
offering visitors what were promoted as 'unrivalled panoramic views' of the
river, docks and ships. Indeed, among the very first moving images of Liverpool,
shot in 1897 by the Lumierè Brothers' cameraman Alexandre Promio, were tracking
shots filmed from the then newly-opened railway (Panorama Pris Du Chemin De Fer
Électrique I-IV). Striking panoramic views shot from the Overhead Railway also
feature prominently in Anson Dyer's A Day in Liverpool (1929), and Down to the
Sea (1938).
As with the Lumierè films, Electrical Exhibition frames a visitor's
perspective of the city that, looking out over the river and docks, offers few
significant architectural landmarks or picturesque views, but represents instead
a thriving industrial landscape which in many ways was itself the iconic centre
of the city. The spectacle of huge transatlantic liners berthed along the
waterfront, or of the bustling dockside activity (rivalled only by London) meant
that the Overhead Railway, which offered visitors unprecedented access to these
sights, played a crucial role in shaping early filmic representations of
Liverpool as a vibrant port-city, replete with what the historian Graeme Milne
describes as "the showy modernity of Liverpool waterfront".
The New Brighton and Southport sequences in the film are no less typical of
many of the early travelogues; both were popular resorts for tourists and day
trippers and appear in much of the amateur footage shot in Liverpool and
Merseyside.
Les Roberts
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Complete film (12:52)
