FANCY A TRIP to the movies? Can we recommend The Perils of Pauline, an adventure romp featuring an heiress being pursued for her fortune?
Or perhaps popular musical The Rollicking Rajah? Or Daisy Doodad’s Dial, a comedy of errors starring hot new starlet Florence Turner who gets arrested in a face-pulling competition?
Not heard of them yet? That’s probably because these are short film reels from 1914, all of which would have been part of a typical cinema programme on that year when war broke out across Europe.
There is a rare chance next week to see a schedule of these light-hearted snippets, along with one of Charlie Chaplin’s earliest appearances, sitting cheek-by-jowl with short films of Allied troops at the Front at Christmas, suffragette protests and other news reels from the time.
The Irish Film Institute in Dublin will run the programme with a specially commissioned original score by Stephen Horne, beginning next Friday, 1 August (the schedule will pop up here next Monday).
The clips were compiled from by the British Film Institute as part of centenary remembrances for the start of World War I. This might give you a taster of what to expect:
All images courtesy BFI/IFI
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