As Seen Through a Telescope

As Seen Through a Telescope AKA The Professor and His Field Glass is a 1900 British short silent comedy film, directed by George Albert Smith, featuring an elderly gentleman getting a glimpse of a womans ankle through a telescope. The threeshot comedy, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, uses a similar technique to that which G.A. Smith pioneered in Grandmas Reading Glass 1900, and although, the editing is unsophisticated, the film does at least show a very early example of how to make use of pointofview closeups in the context of a coherent narrative which is this films main advance on Grandmas Reading Glass. Smiths experiments with editing, Brooke concludes, were ahead of most contemporary filmmakers, and in retrospect it can clearly be seen that he was laying the foundations of film grammar as we now understand it.

An old gentleman is shown on a village street, looking for something through a field glass. Suddenly, he levels the glass on a young couple coming up the road. The girls shoe string came loose, and her companion volunteers to tie it. Here the scene changes, showing how it looks through the old mans glass. A very pretty ankle at short range. Scene changes back again and shows the old fellow tickled to death over the sight. The couple, who, by the way, caught Peeping Tom, come toward him, and as the young man passes behind him, he knocks off his hat and kicks the stool on which he is sitting, from under him, making the old chap present a rather ludicrous appearance, as he sits in the street

Source: Wikipedia