Fire!
About Fire!
A policeman on his morning beat finds one part of a Hove house already burning while the people next door are still asleep. He blows his whistle and runs to the fire station. The brigade hitches a horse to an escape and two horses to a manual engine and gallops past the camera. Inside, a man throws a jug of water on the flames, finds the door blocked, and collapses on the bed as the curtains catch. A fireman breaks the window with a hatchet, hoses the room, and carries him down the escape. The man remembers a child still inside. A fireman brings her out through the smoke. Another person appears at a window; the escape is busy elsewhere, so the crew opens a jumping sheet and he leaps into it.
Cast & crew
More about Fire!
James Williamson produced, directed, and photographed it. He staged the fire at the derelict Ivy Lodge in Hove, the house he had used for Attack on a China Mission (1900). Hove fire station is identifiable. The film opened on 15 October 1901 and was released with Stop Thief! Williamson's September 1902 catalogue prints the five-scene synopsis.
Themes
Reviews
Michael Brooke, writing for BFI Screenonline, calls the cut from the burning house to the station one of the first uses of several shots to carry one story, and says Edwin S. Porter's Life of an American Fireman (1903) took that model and added close-ups.
Look
Williamson shot five scenes and cut them in story order: the fire, the station, the engines in the street, the smoky bedroom, and the ladder outside the window.
Technique
The policeman leaves the burning house and arrives, still running, at the fire station, so two places read as one chase.
Preservation
The BFI holds a black-and-white 35mm print of 281 feet.
Notes
- The BFI holds a 35mm print of 281 feet. English Wikipedia times the film at 4 minutes 40 seconds. The BFI Player listing says 5 minutes.
- Screenonline's Michael Brooke counts five tableaux: the alarm, the turnout, the gallop, the bedroom, and the rescue outside the window.
- The first shot shows the audience a fire the brigade has not yet seen.
- It is on the BFI DVD Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers.
Scenes
- The man buries his face in the bedclothes as the curtains burn, and a fireman breaks in with a hatchet.
- A fireman comes back through the smoke with a child, and the rescued man grabs her.
- With the escape in use elsewhere, a man jumps from a window into a sheet.
Influenced
- Life of an American Fireman (1903)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (James Williamson Fire! (1901).webm)
- BFI DVD Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers
