Grandma's Reading Glass(Movie, 1900)

Grandma's Reading Glass is a 1900 British silent trick film, directed by George Albert Smith, featuring a young boy who borrows a huge magnifying glass to focus on various objects. The film was shot to demonstrate the new technique of close-up. According to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, it "was one of the first films to cut between medium shot and point-of-view close-up." It was destroyed in a fire at Warwick Trading Company's studio facility in 1912. "The close-ups themselves were simulated by photographing the relevant objects inside a black circular mask fixed in front of the camera lens," according to Brooke, "which also had the effect of creating a circular image that helped them stand out from the rest of the film... Smith would develop these techniques in the more narrative-based As Seen Through a Telescope (1900), made the same year." Brooke states that, "There is very little narrative to speak of besides the boy looking around for further objects to examine... but at the time it was released, that would in itself have been sufficient novelty to maintain the audience's interest." The film, long thought lost, was discovered in 1960 in the collection of Danish court ph... ()