Desperate Poaching Affray
About Desperate Poaching Affray
Three hunters catch two poachers at work and chase them over fences and across fields. Both sides have guns, and hunters are hit. Police and dogs join the run. The poachers are taken while they cross a stream. William Haggar made the three-minute chase in Wales. In the United States it was called The Poachers.
Cast & crew
More about Desperate Poaching Affray
William Haggar produced and directed. Walter Haggar and Will Haggar Jr. are in the cast, with Sid Griffiths. Gaumont distributed it. Shot on location, with panning and with figures leaving and entering through the edges of the frame. Released in 1903.
Themes
Background
British chase films of 1903 were being studied by American makers. Porter's train robbery comes the same year.
In film history
With Mottershaw's burglary film, it is one of the shorts later cited as a start of the chase picture.
Making
Haggar used his own family in the cast and shot in real fields rather than on a stage.
Look
Location work, a panning shot, and exits through the frame edge. The camera is not locked for the whole run.
Technique
Cuts that hide the pursuers and then bring them in from the front, so the chase reads as continuous.
Preservation
The three-minute film survives.
Notes
- The American release title is The Poachers.
- A character runs at the camera and exits at the edge. The pursuers are absent from the next shot, then enter from the foreground.
- Another cut lets the poachers leave left and reappear in the foreground, so the chase seems to have lasted longer than the screen time.
- The capture happens in the stream, not back at the first field.
- Historians group it with Frank Mottershaw's A Daring Daylight Burglary as a chase film that fed Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery (1903).
Scenes
- Hunters and poachers trade shots across the fields.
- The poachers are caught mid-stream, with dogs and police in the chase.
Influenced
- The Great Train Robbery (1903)
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-the-poachers)
