The Kiss in the Tunnel(Movie, 1899)

The Kiss in the Tunnel, also known as A Kiss in the Tunnel, is a 1899 film British short silent comedy film, produced and directed by George Albert Smith, showing a couple sharing a brief kiss as their train passes through a tunnel, which is said to mark the beginnings of narrative editing. The film is the first to feature Laura Bayley, Smith's wife. The director, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "felt that some extra spice was called for," in the then-popular 'phantom ride' genre, which featured shots taken from the front of a moving train, "and devised a shot showing a brief, almost furtive moment of passion between two passengers, taking advantage of the brief onset of darkness." Just this middle shot was offered by The Warwick Trading Company to exhibitors, who were advised, "to splice it into train footage," such as Cecil Hepworth's View from an Engine Front - Train Leaving Tunnel (1899), "that they almost certainly would own from previous programmes". This insertion of a single shot into another film indicates, according to film historian Frank Gray, "a new understanding of continuity film editing," which "would have a profound impact on the development of ed... ()