Most Viewed Year 1901

A man flies his plane "Fend l'Air" over Paris.

A convicted criminal dreams about his past the night before his execution.

Girl gives spoonful of milk to kitten. (Cut-in close-up) [The British Film Catalogue]

A man tries to climb ito bed to get a night's sleep. Every time he does, the bed suddenly is someplace else and he falls on the floor.

An inventive use of slow-motion filming helps hammer home the gag as an unconvincing 'Indian chief' hopes to dissolve some trapped wind with a popular brand of indigestion powder.

Close view of legs and feet passing a basement window.

Using a blue tint to set the scene under the sea, this is a short, surprisingly violent film where two divers fight to the death with axes over some treasure beneath the waves.

Silent film

George Albert Smith and Charles Urban snaffled the plum job of travelling to Italy to take a series of views of Italy for the Warwick Trading Company, including this one. The long panning shots of Pompeii linger respectfully, as a tourist would, before the camera finally raises its eye to the mighty volcano looming in the distance beyond.

An up to date idea and a great picture. The professor sits in his laboratory with his newly invented baby incubator. A mother who is anxious for the growth of her child enters, places her baby in care of the professor, who promptly places it in the incubator. An alcohol lamp is lighted under the apparatus, but the professor evidently gets his machine too hot, for in a few seconds the top is opened and the baby taken out. To the great anger of its mother it has grown about two feet in height and has long hair and a full beard. (Edison Catalog)

A jovial looking man is seated nearest the window of a restaurant. He has just finished his meal and the waiter brings a glass of beer, and when he places the glass upon the table, lo, a little sailor boy about six inches high appears from the foam, and climbing down the side of the glass, proceeds to dance a sailor's hornpipe on the table.

A diver jumps into a body of water-- and then comes right back out! This film should not be confused with Ferdinand Zecca's own remake of the same name (Plongeur fantastique, 1905).

Directed by Robert W. Paul.

Actuality film documenting the funeral of Queen Victoria in February 1901. The footage captures the solemn processions and ceremonies that marked the end of her long reign, offering a rare moving-image record of a major state occasion. Widely circulated internationally, the film reflects both the global reach of British newsreel subjects and the early power of cinema to record historic events.

On the roof of an ancient palace appear a young Knight and his lady. While they are making love an ugly old witch appears and is rather troublesome. The Knight commands her to leave, and when he is about to force her away she sits on her broom and rises to the moon. After disappearing she causes various hob-goblins to haunt the pair, the last of them stealing away the lady while the Knight's back is turned. The Knight, frantic with grief, is suddenly confronted by a Fairy, who presents him with a magical sword, and tells him that he can use it to regain the young woman.

This early docudrama shows Auburn Prison and recreates the electrocution of Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President McKinley of the United States.

A satire on the way that audiences unaccustomed to the cinema didn't know how to react to the moving images on a screen - in this film, an unsophisticated (and stereotypical) country yokel is alternately baffled and terrified, in the latter case by the apparent approach of a steam train.

A political quarrel between two men that ends in laughter.