The Arrest of a Bookmaker

This film is also known as, Footpads (1895). Three robbers (footpads), attack a sophisticated gentlemen, who is eventually rescued by a police officer, who is passing by the crooked scene. The film is directed by Edison competitor, Robert W. Paul, who made a lot of films with Birt Acres. Arrest of a Bookmaker (1895), was initially released in a Kinetoscope form in 1895, but did not get shown in a theater venue until 1896. Paul's films were initially treated as Kinetoscope clones, but he re-released all of his Kinetoscopes, in projected theaters in 1896, thus making them officially, theatrical motion pictures.

Arrest of a Bookmaker (1895), aka Footpads (1895), would become known as one of the first crime-dramas ever made. It also boasts, as being one of the earliest examples of creating realism, by utilizing the backdrop of a set. The background is a nicely painted depiction of a city-view, which creates an eerie feeling of a wet, dangerous, London night in 1895. The only drawback is, you can't tell, who the bad-guys are, the way they are all dressed and rolling around on the ground. It took me a couple of viewings to figure out what was going on. It is a quick 25 second film.

8.2 (B MyGrade) = 8 IMDB.

Two toughs grab a well-dressed gentleman in downtown London. A policeman rushes to help the victim, but in the confusion, they overpower the forces of polite society.

It's a very early staged incident from the works of Robert W. Paul. He, like many of the British Victorian film makers had a decidedly middle-class outlook, and so for a decade, threats to the middle class were offered, from robbers, to gypsies to men who kissed women in railway carriages. In the US and France, the film makers soon realized that the middle and upper classes went to live theater, and turned their attention to subjects that might interest their actual audience.

You may notice the flashing sign for Vinola. Apparently this was a brand of shaving soap.

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.

Footpads is a very short film boasting one of cinema's earliest – if not its' first – drama. It was made for the Kinetoscope rather than the screen, and was the last film Paul made with Birt Acres (the two would quickly become bitter enemies when their short partnership prematurely disintegrated). The film has a surprisingly realistic city backdrop against which we see a street mugging foiled by the police.