Rescued by Rover

This is an interesting little film that, for 1905, is pretty good but for today's audiences it's mostly only of historical value. It excels because the film has a plot and pacing and some decent action (at times) for the times. Sure, the film isn't exactly LASSIE, but it's pretty good fare for 1905. The film is about a baby-napping and the faithful Collie who comes to the child's rescue! The problem for me, though, is that although I am a real Cinephile and love historical films, the quality of this film doesn't come close to the really wonderful short films Georges Méliès was making at the same time--with great camera tricks, better and more interesting plots and are much more entertaining today.

This short film is one of the longest I've seen from Hepworth Manufacturing Company, and it also may be among their most remembered movies that is still watched today. There is some fine camera-work here, with several pans, and I'm sure that for 1905 audiences were interested in seeing a film that actually told a story. While narrative films had been around for awhile, this movie still tells a story very well and manages to be pretty interesting, although the plot is of course pretty predictable by today's standards and the story is simple.

The film stars the Hepworth family dog in the role of Rover, a smart canine. When the family's baby daughter is kidnapped, Rover goes off to find her. That's all that happens here, and of course the kid is located. Later, canine heroes such as Rin-Tin-Tin would probably find inspiration from this, so I suppose this could be considered the first dog rescue picture. On its own, there's not much that people today would find worthwhile, so I wouldn't exactly recommend you see this if you aren't into these early movies.

Then again, if you're a film buff of historian, you would find this to be pretty entertaining. It accomplishes its goal and just goes to show how far we've gotten in movie-making since 1905.

(Note: I was slightly amused that the gypsy woman who kidnaps the baby drinks beer. Before she lies down to sleep, she takes a swig of beer, and lays down but not being satisfied enough she gets up to take another swig).

The opening shot is that of Rover sitting near the baby of the family, probably just to establish that there is a close and protective relationship there.

Next the nurse is seen taking the baby for a stroll in his carriage. A woman comes up to the nurse and begs for money and is refused. When the nurse's attention is diverted, the angry woman steals the baby. The nurse is rightfully distraught and tells the mother. Rover overhears and goes out to search for the baby. In one of the first cases on film of a dog stereotyping he first searches the local tenement because he assumes a poor person did this. Not being a cop he can just bust down door after door looking until he comes upon the baby. The kidnapper shoos the dog away then gets drunk and goes to sleep. The dog then goes to get the parents so they can retrieve the baby.

It really was all in the family here. Cecil Hepworth directed the film and Mrs. Hepworth wrote the script. Cecil, his wife, and their baby star as the family in the film. Blair, who plays Rover, was the Hepworth family dog. Hepworth continued making films into the 1920s but could not make the transition into longer films with more complex narratives and his business went bankrupt in 1924.

This film does a good job of building suspense - the audience does not know where the kidnapper has taken the child or what she wants with her.

The story of "Rescued By Rover" is simple, but it's told quite well for its time. There is good action, good continuity from one scene to the next, and most of the shots are carried off well. It takes a somewhat predictable (and perhaps implausible) story and gives it energy, using occasional cross-cutting and mixing some indoor and outdoor scenes.

The story is the kind of melodrama that was very common in the earliest years of narrative films, but it also features some imaginative touches in the details. Most of the characters are rather plain, so the dog is the liveliest member of the cast. It was probably rather an achievement to get "Rover" to behave so well, and his actions come across as quite believable.

While the story is of a now-familiar kind, it was probably more novel at the time, and in any case this remains a worthwhile example of rather good early story-telling technique.

Rescued By Rover is indeed a milestone in cinematic history in so many ways. Today's audiences may not appreciate the simple story of a dog sniffing out a family's missing baby, but there are several historical aspects of this 1905 film worth noting.

If you somewhat familiar with earlier films coming from Biograph and Edison Studios (the primary film production companies making movies in the early 1900's), a large sampling are "chase" films such as "The Escape Lunatic," "The Moonshiner" and "Personal," all released a year earlier. Since film language was still evolving, these older movies would follow a long string of events which wouldn't conclude until every participant was completely passing by the camera.

In the Hepworth's film one notices the crisp clips that didn't devolve into seemingly unending segments of people going through their paces. Slicing 20 shots into the movie, Cecil Hepworth and primary director Lewin Fitzhammon created a natural flow so appreciated by today's standards. The scenes of the dog tracking the baby zipped along, cutting out unnecessary elongation of extended scenes. Maybe having an animal, with a short attention span, required these scenes to be short. Whatever the reason, Rescued established a new way of editing at a much faster pace.

This was also one of the first movies to use Peter Cooper-Hewitt's new Mercury Vapor Lamps to illuminate an interior movie set. Previously, filming had to be done under the sun in open air or glass studios. One can see the lights plugged in and used during the attic scenes where the drunken woman is with the baby.

Rescue today is primarily known for being the first movie to portray as its hero an animal. The loving family dog of the Hepworth's, Blair, is the star here, a pioneering showcase of an animal carrying the story, a la a Lassie or a Flipper. In addition, the film, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the cheapest movie ever produced, tabbing at a minuscule $37.40. Much of the expense I would imagine was paying for two of the actors, the baby's kidnapper and a soldier.

One last noteworthy aspect is that the film existing today was likely not the original one. Rover was so successful that the Hepworths wore out two other negatives making hundreds of prints for a demanding public and had to reshoot the scenes. The print seen here is likely the third effort of making a new negative for reprints.