In August 1903, a new form of entertainment made its debut at the Alhambra Theatre, one of Londonās most famous music halls. The headline acts were Carmen, the New Grand Dramatic Ballet and the Worldās Monarchs of Magic, but the āturnā that captivated the audience enough to empty the bars and silence the chatter was a shaky, grainy film shot through a microscope. Its unlikely stars were cheese mites, carefully cultivated on a nice piece of Stilton and now creeping and crawling over the newly installed big screen like monstrous eight-legged aliens. Cheese Mites lasted only a minute, but it was a sensation and played to a packed house for months.
WHEN Douglas Cox, manager of , agreed to include a series of science films in his music-hall programme, he was taking a bit of a risk. But it was August, traditionally the slackest month of the year and the ideal time to experiment a little. Like every other turn-of-the-century theatre impresario, Cox was constantly seeking something new with which to wow his pleasure-hungry patrons.
In 1903, eight years after the LumiĆØre brothers first demonstrated the technology of cinema, films were still a novelty, but film shot down a microscope ā that was something else. If people were amazed by a magicianās latest illusion, they would be astonished by a glimpse of the world inside a piece of cheese, Cox thought. His instincts were spot on. As the monstrous mites crawled across the screen ālike great uncanny crabs bristling with long spiny hairs and legsā, the audience was enthralled and appalled in equal measure. Cheese Mites was an instant hit.
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The man who brought cheese mites to the masses was . Lured to London to run one of the leading British film companies of the time, in 1903 he struck out on his own, establishing the Charles Urban Trading Company. Urban planned to make films about science, a subject he thought eminently suitable for popular entertainment. The UK had a long tradition of science as entertainment: magic lantern shows were hugely popular, museums had never been so busy and exhibitions promoting the latest technology always drew a crowd.
What sort of science films would people pay to see? Natural history was the obvious choice. There had always been plenty of gentleman amateurs who travelled, collected or busied themselves with a microscope, but by Edwardian times natural history was practically the national hobby. Legions of working people spent their leisure time rambling, birdwatching and collecting butterflies. Nature was the perfect subject for films ā particularly if they revealed aspects of nature people never normally saw. They would astound. They would amuse. And they would appeal to another peculiarly British trait ā a desire to learn something useful, so long as it didnāt require much effort. Most importantly, Urban reckoned they would make him lots of money.
Urbanās films wouldnāt be the first scientific films. āFrom the first days of cinematography a few doctors and scientists had made films as part of their research,ā says Tim Boon, curator of Films of Fact, a new exhibition at Londonās Science Museum. āBut Urbanās would be the first science films the British public would see.ā
Urban had an eye for talent as well as an untapped market, and hired amateur naturalist and photographer Francis Martin Duncan to make a series of films through a microscope. In August, The Unseen World joined the Worldās Monarchs of Magic on the Alhambraās playbill.
First up was Cheese Mites. āThe popularity of early films had as much to do with their novelty as with their subjects,ā says Boon. āPeople shuddered at monsters and took mock fright at locomotives apparently hurtling towards them. When the cheese mites appeared on screen the audience was expected to recoil in terror.ā They did. After fear, there was awe. When The Frog, His Webbed Foot, And the Circulation of his Blood appeared on screen everyone marvelled at the blood ārushing through its artery like water in a millstreamā. Even the sight of protoplasm streaming around the cells of a piece of pondweed seemed magical. Then for an edge-of-the-seat thrill there was The Fresh Water Hydra, whose much magnified tentacles writhed towards the audience like snakes.
āThe hydraās tentacles writhed towards the audience like snakesā
The creatures may have been āhideousā, the pictures āblood-curdlingā and the future of the cheese industry now in doubt, but Urbanās films had everything ā thrills, magic, humour and even a little education. āAs a music hall turn, last nightās production was an unqualified success,ā reported the Morning Post. āPeople like to be interested, and they donāt in the least mind being interested by something worth knowing.ā Even the crusty gents at Nature had to admit the films deserved a look, even if it meant visiting a music hall. āThose interested in science need not spend the evening there,ā the journal advised. āThey could go to see just what concerned them.ā
Urban had whetted the nationās appetite for nature films, and Duncan made stars of the unlikeliest organisms. Nature and film were a winning combination and when Duncan left for a job at London Zoo, Urban turned to a man who would become one of the most celebrated names in the history of nature films. Percy Smith was a lowly civil servant who put up with his āhatefully tediousā job so that he could spend his spare time pursuing his passions ā spiders, microscopy and nature photography. Urban had apparently been so impressed by Smithās close-up photograph of a bluebottleās tongue that he lent him the equipment to capture similar images on film, which he then showed in his new film theatre.
Smithās first box-office hit was The Balancing Blue-Bottle, featuring a fly that juggled a cork, twirled matchsticks and nursed a miniature doll. The papers went even crazier than they had over Cheese Mites. How had he done it? Was the film faked? Had the fly been trained? The film, and a later version, , was intended to demonstrate the insectās tremendous strength, but to most viewers it was the funniest thing theyād ever seen.
A juggling fly was a hard act to follow. But Smith had just the thing. Since 1907, he had been experimenting with time-lapse photography, inventing new techniques for capturing the hour-by-hour growth of plants. He set up his cameras in a disused bathroom, its windows covered with brown paper, then rigged up a bizarre apparatus that included bits of Meccano, gramophone needles, drawer knobs, candle wicks and a clock whose hour wheel would trigger an electrical circuit to expose a single frame.
appeared in 1910, a mesmerising ballet of flowers developing and bursting into bloom. Audiences that had cheered the juggling fly were spellbound and then erupted into riotous applause before demanding a second showing. āIn Lewisham the audience not only applauded The Birth of a Flower, but held up the performance until the manager appeared and promised to rewind the picture,ā Smith later recalled.
Smith made more than 50 films for Urban before the first world war intervened. They guaranteed him legions of fans, but he won millions more with the films he made for Secrets of Nature, a long-running series produced by British Instructional Films in the 1920s and 1930s. His subjects were both ordinary and extraordinary ā mosses and moulds, pond life and peas, ferns and fishes. The Secrets of Nature films were in constant demand around the world.
In pre-television days, when people went to the new cinemas to watch newsreels, travelogues and documentaries, Smithās films were enduringly popular. Smith knew exactly how to keep his audience happy. Give them films about things they had at least a passing acquaintance with: the public loved to watch aphids, the growth of garden flowers and vegetables and the antics of bread mould ā but had no time for the complicated life of a wood wasp or the strangling growth of the parasitic dodder. The second trick was to keep it short. āNo botanical subject can hold popular interest for more than 8 or 9 minutes. That is why every plant has a life history which exactly fits into 850 feet of film.ā And most important of all: āThrow out anything which appears technical or requires any definite mental effort.ā
