User Reviews

Here's another of the many early Lumiere actualities, in which they explore the habits and customs of exotic foreigners. In this case, it's some girls in an unnamed London street, dancing with each other. I'd like to imagine it's an early example of people doing the Lambeth Walk. Hoy!

As usual in London, there's an elegant, top-hatted gentleman who stops to observe the natives in their weird tribal exercises, and also possibly to catch a glance of a an errant calf.

It's all ended by what appears to be a cab passing between the camera and its subject, at just the moment when the camera is about to run out of film. This could, of course, be a coincidence. For some reason, my cynical nature refuses to let me think so.

There's a famous magazine photograph -- well, it's famous in Britain, at any rate -- that was published in Picture Post in 1943. Titled 'Dancing the Lambeth Walk', it depicts a girl about nine years old in an East End street, wearing a woman's high-heeled shoes and spoofing an elegant dancer while other street urchins of the same age laugh at her la-di-dah efforts.

I was reminded of that photo when I saw this brief film, shot in London almost half a century earlier. We see three girls about the same age as that Lambeth Walker, or perhaps just a bit older, performing an elaborate dance in the street while a hurdy-gurdy plays nearby. These girls are wearing elaborate Victorian hats and frocks, yet while they dance they raise their skirts to display their high-buttoned shoes. The crossroads shown here -- as well as the people in the film, and their clothing -- are all clearly more genteel than the East End neighbourhood in that Picture Post photo.

These girls are not extemporising; it's clear that they're performing some dance which they've carefully rehearsed. I wish I could recognise the dance; it might help if I knew what music was playing in this silent film. Although this movie is very brief, it gives us a fascinating glimpse of girls' clothing and shoes of the time period, and the dance may have some historic value as well. My rating for this: 9 out of 10.