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Esme Collings
Projected films, courtesy of former partners Birt Acres and Robert Paul, made their way throughout Britain during 1896, and it was only a matter of time before aspiring filmmakers would begin experimenting with the new medium.
One character who made a brief, but influential, impact on the nascent British film-making community was Albert Arthur (Esme) Collings, a portrait photographer with a studio at 120 Western Road, Hove) and one-time business partner of William Friese-Greene – who may well have been an influence. Perhaps more significant, though, was Collings’ association with Alfred Darling, a mechanical engineer who specialised in cinematographic equipment. It was to Darling that Collings turned when he struggled with the technical problems of cine photography.
Collings made only approximately nineteen films – almost all of them in 1896 – and only two of these still survive. The bulk of his films were shot during the summer months: Brighton Front on a Bank Holiday, Boys Scrambling for Pennies Under the West Pier , Children Paddling and Playing on the Sands, Donkey Riding, Hove Sea Wall in a Gale, Bathers on the Beach and Ocean Waves in a Storm. He also made Train Arriving at Dyke Station, filmed at Devil’s Dyke, a copy of the Lumiere’s train movie, and filmed the Lord Mayor’s Show in London on the 9th November. Late in the year, Collings also filmed Broken Melody, featuring the actor and cellist Auguste van Biene, from the play by James Tanner and Herbert Keene. Another notable film was Woman Undressing (AKA A Victorian Lady in Her Boudoir), Britain’s first smut movie – advertised as intended for ‘Gentlemen’s Smoking Concert Audiences Only’. The lady in question is unknown, but her titillating striptease comes to a stop when she reaches her petticoat – presumably to keep within Victorian Britain’s stringent obscenity laws.
In October 1896, Collings held a “Vitagraph” show at Brighton’s Empire Theatre of Varieties, the first public exhibition of his films in his home town. Collings’ show returned to the Empire in early January 1897, after which he seems to have bowed out of the filmmaking industry in order to devote his time to painting. [ADD]
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