The X-Ray Fiend
About The X-Ray Fiend
A courting couple, played by Laura Bayley and Tom Green, stand together with an umbrella. George Albert Smith cuts to them in black suits painted as skeletons, the umbrella reduced to its metal ribs, as if an X-ray had stripped them. A second jump cut puts flesh and umbrella back.
Cast & crew
More about The X-Ray Fiend
George Albert Smith directed, produced, and photographed the 44-second trick. Also titled The X-Rays. Warwick Trading Company distributed it. Bayley was Smith's wife. Green was a Brighton comedian. Wilhelm Röntgen had described X-rays in 1895. Smith uses two jump cuts.
Themes
Background
Röntgen's rays were news in 1895 and 1896. Smith turned the fad into a 44-second joke the next year.
Making
The effect is a costume change hidden by a cut, not a photographic X-ray. Smith stops the camera, the actors change, and he starts again.
Reviews
Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline identifies the two jump cuts as among the earliest British examples of that trick.
Look
Smith shot it himself. The joke depends on a locked setup so the couple occupy the same spot before and after the cut.
Technique
Two jump cuts: into the skeleton suits, and back out of them.
Preservation
The 44-second film survives.
Notes
- Michael Brooke, writing for BFI Screenonline, calls the cuts one of the first British uses of the jump cut for a special effect.
- The skeleton costumes are black bodysuits with bones painted on.
- The umbrella gag is the giveaway: only the ribs remain in the X-ray shot.
- Smith worked in Brighton, in the group later called the Brighton School.
Scenes
- The couple and the umbrella snap into bones and ribs, then snap back.
