A Daring Daylight Burglary
About A Daring Daylight Burglary
A burglar climbs a garden wall and breaks into a country house. A boy sees him and runs for the police. Two officers arrive. On the roof the burglar fights one of them and throws him off. An ambulance takes the injured man away. The burglar flees across country, boards a train, and is caught at the next station after the police wire ahead.
Cast & crew
More about A Daring Daylight Burglary
Frank Mottershaw directed this Sheffield Photo Company short, also sold as A Daring Daylight Robbery. Members of the Sheffield Fire Brigade appear, along with music-hall actors hired at ten shillings for the day.
Themes
In film history
A Sheffield chase film of 1903 whose cutting Porter studied for The Great Train Robbery later that year.
Making
Mottershaw staged the break-in, the roof fall, the ambulance, and the train pursuit with local firemen and hall performers rather than a stock company on a studio floor.
Technique
The story jumps from a walled garden to a roof, an ambulance, open country, and two railway stations, with the arrest set up by a wire to the next stop.
Preservation
A print survives and has been posted for viewing.
Notes
- The alternate title is A Daring Daylight Robbery.
- Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery, released later in 1903, drew on cutting patterns used here.
- The capture depends on a telegram to the next station, not on the chase alone.
- The day rate for the music-hall players was ten shillings.
Scenes
- The burglar throws a policeman off the roof, and an ambulance carries him away.
- He escapes on a train and is arrested at the next station.
Influenced
- The Great Train Robbery (1903)
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-daylight-burglary)
