boblipton
Despite the claim that this was Britain's first animated film, a viewing of he two clips available shows no animation. Instead it shows several instances of some quite lovely camera trickery.Walter Booth, like Georges Melies, came to movies from stage magic. While Melies was interested in adding to his bag of tricks and extending his grammar of story-telling, with this effort Walter Booth tore up the model and started from scratch. It is the hands of the artist --- presumably Booth's -- which construct the world of the film and which point out the details, using camera masking. The effect is fascinating, but like Melies' conjoint grammar, it would vanish within a decade.
