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A three-shot comedy that uses a similar technique to that which G.A. Smith pioneered in Grandma's Reading Glass (1900) - the lead character (this time a middle-aged man) examines an object (this time a woman's ankle being stroked by her lover) through some kind of magnifying device (this time a telescope), the object in question being shown in close-up.
Although the editing is unsophisticated, the film does at least show a very early example of how to make use of point-of-view close-ups in the context of a coherent narrative (which is this film's main advance on Grandma's Reading Glass), even though it is only in the very last seconds, when we realise that the watcher has himself been watched, that we see that the film has been leading up to an all too literal punchline.
Smith's experiments with editing - other examples of which can be seen in The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899), The House That Jack Built and Let Me Dream Again (both 1900) - were ahead of most contemporary film-makers, and in retrospect it can clearly be seen that he was laying the foundations of film grammar as we now understand it.
Michael Brooke *This film is included in the BFI DVD compilation 'Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers'.
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Complete film (0:42)
