BFI

The second single-shot Bamforth film of 1899 to revolve around the attempted theft of milk, this variation is less knockabout and more alarming than Catching the Milk Thief (Bamforth, 1899).

Here, the milk theft is from a baby, temporarily abandoned in a park due to its nurse's amorous tryst with a policeman. Fortunately, neither have gone far, and it seems that the tramp's interest is entirely in the milk rather than the baby, so the matter is rapidly (albeit violently) resolved and the status quo is restored.

But this film is far more ambivalent than its predecessor, as the tramp is by no means the obvious villain of the piece. All three of the adults - the tramp, the nurse and the policeman - were succumbing to irresistible natural urges, but it is arguable that the tramp's attempts at relieving them were far less potentially dangerous.

From this perspective, it seems that the level of violence meted out at the end derives not from the tramp's crime but from the policeman's own guilty realisation that his complicity in neglecting the child might have had far graver consequences.

This introduction of a subtext concerning domestic and civic responsibility shows that even though film grammar had yet to move beyond the single-shot concept, it was nonetheless possible to tell a story of at least some emotional complexity even while staying within these limitations.

Michael Brooke

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