The story told in Rescued by Rover is banal and preposterous, with a tinge of nasty prejudice against the poor. But watch this modest six minute film shot in leafy Walton-on-Thames after some of the earlier silent classics and you should immediately see why critic Michael Brooke of the BFI labelled it "amongst the most important films ever made" and "possibly the only point in film history when British cinema unquestionably led the world." The Great Train Robbery was made only two years before, but in its editing and pace, Rescued by Rover is in a different class. Suddenly the cinema seems to have leapt light years forward and in a few sequences there's little to distinguish this film, now more than a century old, from the way such a story would be mounted today.
When a baby is kidnapped by a female beggar, Rover the collie, faithful pet of the baby's family, springs into action. He jumps through a window, runs down streets and swims a river to reach a row of meagre cottages where he locates the missing child. He's shooed away by the beggar, who is clearly a bad lot as she constantly swigs beer straight from the bottle. Back home, Rover employs the art of doggie pantomime to persuade his master to accompany him back to the cottages and reclaim his child.
The film's narrative breakthrough is most obvious in the sequences depicting Rover's journeys, and in particular in their narrative logic and their treatment of time. Previously films presenting longer narratives were constructed by stringing together a series of discrete tableaux-like single shot scenes. While the audience might imagine time elapsing offscreen in the gaps between scenes, just as in the theatre, the action within each scene took place in real time. Here, directors Cecil Hepworth and Lewin Fitzhamon entirely abandon the tableau structure, instead using editing, and particularly matches on action, to create narrative sequences from several shots, compressing time and eliding actions that the audience will take as read to create narrative drive, tension, pace and excitement.
So while the domestic interior where the mother reacts distraughtly to the loss of her child early on in the film looks like an old fashioned tableau, we can already see Rover moving excitedly around in the frame before jumping through the window. This action propels us into the first hunt sequence: the film cuts to the exterior of the house with Rover emerging from the window then, in succession, we see him running down a street, rounding a corner and swimming a river. This river is an important feature: it provides the opportunity to vary the action, to underline the challenge and to get a great closeup of the dog shaking himself dry, as well as providing a memorable landmark to help viewers apprehend the film's narrative geography. It also, incidentally, dramatically underlines the division between the comfortable world of Rover and the baby, and the 'wrong side of the river', the impoverished domain of the kidnapper.
We then see the entire sequence of locations in reverse as the dog returns home – and both times, the journey is already taking much less time on screen than it would take in reality. When dog and master return together, time is compressed still further – now we know the route, we only need to see a shot each of the street and the river, where Rover has helpfully located a rowing boat for his human companion. The final journey isn't shown at all – the film cuts straight from the beggar's garret to the family home. Now that the baby is safe, the suspense is resolved, and the audience is expected to fill in the logical blanks so that the film can get on with satisfying the need for 'closure' by showing the family happily reunited.
There are some other interesting technical features too – the scenes in the beggar's room provide an early example of using artificial lighting to create mood rather than simply to make sure the action is clear – but they pale beside the triumph of continuity, framing and editing. There are a few precedents of multiple shot chase scenes and matches on action, but the extent to which these techniques were brought together and elaborated upon so skilfully here seems genuinely unprecedented.
Cecil Hepworth, son of a magic lanternist, was one of the leading founding fathers of the British film industry, continuing to make films into the 1920s. Rescued by Rover was a family affair: Hepworth himself, his wife Margaret and their baby are the family in the film, Rover is their own dog, and Margaret wrote the screenplay. The beggar and another minor character are played by professional actors, quite likely another first for British cinema. The film was a great success, and was remounted twice as the negative wore out from striking so many prints (back then, prints were sold rather than rented to exhibitors and the demand was huge). It is credited with, among other things, inspiring D W Griffith and popularising the name 'Rover' for dogs.
Many of its tropes were recycled in the swathes of films featuring resourceful animals that followed – the scene in which Rover tries to get his master to follow him, in which we're invited to share the dog's imagined frustration at being unable to talk, gave rise to a genre staple. But decades before Lassie, Rin Tin Tin and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo pressed their paws into the walk of fame, there was Rover, paddling gamely across a Thames valley stream.
When a baby is kidnapped by a female beggar, Rover the collie, faithful pet of the baby's family, springs into action. He jumps through a window, runs down streets and swims a river to reach a row of meagre cottages where he locates the missing child. He's shooed away by the beggar, who is clearly a bad lot as she constantly swigs beer straight from the bottle. Back home, Rover employs the art of doggie pantomime to persuade his master to accompany him back to the cottages and reclaim his child.
The film's narrative breakthrough is most obvious in the sequences depicting Rover's journeys, and in particular in their narrative logic and their treatment of time. Previously films presenting longer narratives were constructed by stringing together a series of discrete tableaux-like single shot scenes. While the audience might imagine time elapsing offscreen in the gaps between scenes, just as in the theatre, the action within each scene took place in real time. Here, directors Cecil Hepworth and Lewin Fitzhamon entirely abandon the tableau structure, instead using editing, and particularly matches on action, to create narrative sequences from several shots, compressing time and eliding actions that the audience will take as read to create narrative drive, tension, pace and excitement.
So while the domestic interior where the mother reacts distraughtly to the loss of her child early on in the film looks like an old fashioned tableau, we can already see Rover moving excitedly around in the frame before jumping through the window. This action propels us into the first hunt sequence: the film cuts to the exterior of the house with Rover emerging from the window then, in succession, we see him running down a street, rounding a corner and swimming a river. This river is an important feature: it provides the opportunity to vary the action, to underline the challenge and to get a great closeup of the dog shaking himself dry, as well as providing a memorable landmark to help viewers apprehend the film's narrative geography. It also, incidentally, dramatically underlines the division between the comfortable world of Rover and the baby, and the 'wrong side of the river', the impoverished domain of the kidnapper.
We then see the entire sequence of locations in reverse as the dog returns home – and both times, the journey is already taking much less time on screen than it would take in reality. When dog and master return together, time is compressed still further – now we know the route, we only need to see a shot each of the street and the river, where Rover has helpfully located a rowing boat for his human companion. The final journey isn't shown at all – the film cuts straight from the beggar's garret to the family home. Now that the baby is safe, the suspense is resolved, and the audience is expected to fill in the logical blanks so that the film can get on with satisfying the need for 'closure' by showing the family happily reunited.
There are some other interesting technical features too – the scenes in the beggar's room provide an early example of using artificial lighting to create mood rather than simply to make sure the action is clear – but they pale beside the triumph of continuity, framing and editing. There are a few precedents of multiple shot chase scenes and matches on action, but the extent to which these techniques were brought together and elaborated upon so skilfully here seems genuinely unprecedented.
Cecil Hepworth, son of a magic lanternist, was one of the leading founding fathers of the British film industry, continuing to make films into the 1920s. Rescued by Rover was a family affair: Hepworth himself, his wife Margaret and their baby are the family in the film, Rover is their own dog, and Margaret wrote the screenplay. The beggar and another minor character are played by professional actors, quite likely another first for British cinema. The film was a great success, and was remounted twice as the negative wore out from striking so many prints (back then, prints were sold rather than rented to exhibitors and the demand was huge). It is credited with, among other things, inspiring D W Griffith and popularising the name 'Rover' for dogs.
Many of its tropes were recycled in the swathes of films featuring resourceful animals that followed – the scene in which Rover tries to get his master to follow him, in which we're invited to share the dog's imagined frustration at being unable to talk, gave rise to a genre staple. But decades before Lassie, Rin Tin Tin and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo pressed their paws into the walk of fame, there was Rover, paddling gamely across a Thames valley stream.