Robert Paul is a largely forgotten name today, but he was a major pioneer of British cinema, and was quick to grasp the commercial potential of cinema in ways that better known pioneers such as William Friese-Greene were not. He was more of a mechanic than a filmmaker making, with Birt Acres, his own camera on which to shoot films in 1895, and also Britain's first projector, the Animatograph, with which to screen them in 1896. Early in the 20th century he had a custom-made studio built in Muswell Hill.
This isn't one of Paul's better efforts: the lighting is very dull and the images rather blurred. It's a comedy of sorts, based on a popular stage play, in which a rather inebriated husband comes home late at night and tries to get fruity with the missus. Of course she's having none of it. If you watch it and don't like it blame the drunk fella because he wrote the play.
