Godfather’s Day… Happy Birthday, Mr Paul!, with Ian Christie and John Sweeney, BFI

“… the idea that any single person invented cinema is essentially absurd… it was a relay race, a group effort, a product of the spirit of the age…” Ian Christie

Cinema had more than one godfather but some were more important than others and, regardless of who moved the pictures first over the invisible finishing line, nothing was achieved without co-operation as well as­­ innovation. Research in this area has shifted opinion over recent years with even William Friese-Green, whose reputation was demolished in the 60s, now gaining new respect thanks to the efforts of historians like Peter Domankiewicz who have shown that the Bristol man did indeed shoot moving pictures.

Electrical engineer, RW Paul was - perhaps - the main figure in Britain, and Professor Ian Christie has been one of those leading the research into what can provably be attributed to him with a graphic novel already out and a full book Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema (Chicago University Press) due this November. One incident he can take away from Friese-Green is the visit of a policeman following celebrations at his office in Hatton Gardens after a successful screen test in 1895. In John Boulting’s The Magic Box biopic of 1951, this is attributed to Friese-Green (Robert Donat) and the curious copper is one Lawrence Olivier; right response but wrong pioneer.

Harry Lamore, Ellen and RW have Fun on the Clothesline (1897)

Paul was born 150 years ago on 3rd October 1869 at 3 Albion Place, off Liverpool Road, Highbury near the main drag connecting Upper Street to Holloway Road, a rather grand house in late-Victorian property terms in a quiet suburban area… times change! Professor Christie talked us through an educational background including time at Finsbury Technical College, then located next to Blackfriars Bridge and seen prominently in Paul’s Blackfriars Bridge screened today. Paul established an engineering business in Hatton Gardens and saw this as his main business despite his interest in film – and he successfully returned to engineering when he decided to bow out of film. The kind if back up plan W F-G didn’t really have.

During his ten years of peak activity, Paul undoubtedly advance the art as both a technical innovator and an artistic one: cinema bringing both together in forms of new expression. The World’s first two-scene film was (probably) Paul’s Come Along, Do (1898) which has now had a fragment of its long-lost second scene - inside the art gallery - restored from one of his illustrated catalogues, another innovation in marketing terms – take that Mr Edison or more specifically, William Dickson who did the work the Big E was happy to patent!

Come Along, Do scene one, outside an art gallery...

Paul was probably also the first to use title cards, another innovation it’s hard not to take for granted: this was the era of walking and then crawling – an emerging technology being slowly elaborated by enthusiastic individuals with varying degrees of business nouse.

As with Bryony Dixon’s Victorian screenings this was a hugely entertaining show and tell with Professor Christie filling us in between every precious projected Paul as John Sweeney channelled the spirit of the age through practice-perfect accompaniment. As much as Paul and his mate HG Wells, Mr Sweeney is a time traveller, placing his mind amid this antique cinema and expressing it afresh with unerring musicality. Who’s for an evening of John and RW at the BFI Imax complete with Palm Orchestra as we had for the Victorians in 2018? John, Paul, Bryony and Ian anyone?

The hits just kept on coming as Christie discussed the importance of Paul’s wife Ellen who was a performer at the famous Alhambra music hall in Leicester Square and no doubt saw the entertainment potential of his films. She featured in Come Along, Do and A Soldier’s Courtship (1896) shown today and with her husband in the recently identified Fun on the Clothesline (1897) which featured slack-wire specialist Harry Lamore enabling the BFI’s Bryony Dixon to spot the dynamic duo too.

Nurses attend to the wounded in mocked up Boer War scenarios

Ellen was more important to Paul behind the camera and his obituary from an electrical engineering colleague, described her as “… producer, stage manager or principal lady in many a playlet for which her expert knowledge eminently fitted her.” Another re-emerging “Silent Woman” and likely one of this country’s first directors and scenario writers too.

A Collier’s Life (1904) could be seen as the birth of British documentary film with a detailed presentation of the work of Shirebrook Colliery in Nottinghamshire across a day – including lunch break with door-stop sarnies. Earlier Paul had recorded a number of films about the Boer War, mostly re-enactments filmed at home to illustrate the nature of the conflict: it being virtually impossible to record battle scenes – and he tried - Muswell Hill golf course was an effective double.

Lunch time at Shirebrook Colliery in 1904

Fewer than 80 of the 800 or so films Paul produced have survived but they still provide vivid examples of his output with his illustrated catalogues showing us what we now miss.

Paul continued to develop fantasy films such as the trick-shot laden The ? Motorist (1906) in which a couple drive up a wall to escape chase, go over the clouds to Saturn, drive round the rings and back to Earth where their car transforms into horse and carriage: fantasy worthy of HG with his bicycles and time travel. There’s a mad adventure involving a deranged jazz-handed criminal in The Fatal Hand (1907) and surreal Dancer’s Dream (1905) in which the titular character dances in both heaven and a richly tinted hell… we’ve all been there.

Dancing through Heaven and Hell?

These films are precious and a vital part of our history as well as film history.

Christie ventures that Paul’s very success at his day job meant that he never became a “casualty” or failure and just moved on to engineering full time. He was around until the 1940s by which time the artform had advanced but maybe the primitive early works been overlooked.

More detail is eagerly awaited in Ian Christie’s newbook Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema (Chicago University Press) to be published next month.

More Paul is now available for free on theBFIPlayer with a collection of his finest surviving films during which he helped create and establish the artform that still dominates all others 125 years later.

A new exhibition on Paul, The Forgotten Showman,opens at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford on 17 November, running until February.

Tribute to the Archivists: Independent researcher and film historian Camille Blot-Wellens will present the annualErnest Lindgren Lecture A Centenary Tribute to Harold Brown at BFI Southbank on 10 December, celebrating the life and contribution of Harold Brown, the BFI’s first archive preservation officer, who pioneered a methodology to identify early films through their physical characteristics.

Shirebrook Colliery at work