Hyde Park Bicycling Scene (1896) User Reviews

Women on Bikes

[JoeytheBrit · 6/10 · 13 November 2009]

Robert Paul is a largely forgotten name today, but he was a major pioneer of British cinema, and was quick to grasp the commercial potential of cinema in ways that better known pioneers such as William Friese-Greene were not. He was more of a mechanic than a filmmaker making, with Birt Acres, his own camera on which to shoot films in 1895, and also Britain's first projector, the Animatograph, with which to screen them in 1896. Early in the 20th century he had a custom-made studio built in Muswell Hill.

This film was shot in November 1896. It's a very short piece showing women cycling through Hyde Park. Women cyclists were apparently considering very daring back then, and were therefore often the subject of early filmmakers.

A fun little documentary

[Tornado_Sam · 10 December 2017]

There isn't much to say about Robert Paul's "Hyde Park Bicycling Scene", other than that it is one of the director's earlier short subjects. Paul would later get into comedy films but back in the 1800s most of what people were doing were documentaries. Paul was no exception and for a while remained the only filmmaker in Britain, and thus one of the earliest filmmakers in general.

As it is, this short takes place inside Hyde Park and is only about 20 seconds long, and features various bicyclers riding past the camera and several buggies as well. Of course, being from so long ago it's silly to look for a story of any kind but this moment in time is entertaining merely because it shows us what happened one day in Hyde Park. While there's nothing else special here it is so short it isn't a waste of time at all for film buffs and historians.