Rough Sea at Dover
About Rough Sea at Dover
Waves hit a stone breakwater at Dover. People stand on the wall, well above the water, and a large wave runs along the face of it toward the shore. Smaller waves follow. The camera does not move.
Cast & crew
More about Rough Sea at Dover
Birt Acres shot it in mid-1895 with a camera he and Robert W. Paul designed, first meant for Edison kinetoscopes. Acres projected it on 14 January 1896 for the Royal Photographic Society at Hanover Street, London, on his Kinetic Lantern. It was not in the program he had shown the Lyonsdown Photographic Society four days earlier. On 23 April 1896 it played Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York with Edison films. Paul produced. The recorded length is 17 seconds. It is also called Gale at Dover and Sea Waves at Dover.
Themes
Background
Projected in London in January 1896 and in New York that April, it was one of the British views audiences saw in the first months of theatrical film.
In film history
It became one of the most widely shown early British films, a single wave used as a program closer and as a test of the projector.
Making
Acres and Paul split soon after these 1895 subjects. The Dover wave was one of the films that traveled with both of them.
Look
Birt Acres set the camera on the Dover breakwater and let the wave cross the frame. The shot is fixed.
Preservation
The breakwater shot survives.
Notes
- The Lyonsdown showing on 10 January 1896 came two weeks after the Lumière private-then-public Paris screenings of late December 1895. This Dover film was held for the Royal Photographic Society on 14 January.
- Paul is credited as producer and, on some records, as co-director and as the supplier of the camera.
- A print that circulates also carries a second, river view. The famous shot is the breakwater.
Scenes
- A single wave runs the length of the Dover wall while figures stand on top of it.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons
