Electric Edwardians: The Story of the Mitchell & Kenyon Collection (review)

The title of Vanessa Toulmin's latest work on the films made by Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon in fin de siècle Britain tellingly refers to this treasure trove as the Mitchell & Kenyon Collection. The author, herself, played a principal role in turning what was an unlikely discovery of hundreds of local, fiction, and military films made by a previously unknown film production and exhibition company into a meticulously restored and researched collection. Noting the span and reinvigorated public life of the collection in her acknowledgments, she lists "a three-part BBC 2 series, two DVDS, many publications, a book of collected essays, [and] over eighty film shows throughout the world" (vi). This book, which collects a decade of research and intertwines it with the histories and cultural contexts of these films, might seem to the final word on the subject; however, Toulmin peels back enough layers of cinema exhibition and distribution history to attract future inquiries on these fascinating films for years to come.

Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon operated what was one ofmany film production and exhibition companies in Britain in the early years of cinema. With backgrounds in photography and entertainment, respectively, the two started making and exhibiting films in 1897, entering what had already become a competitive emerging market. By 1901, the company had developed experience in three genres of films—actualities, fiction films, and historical reconstructions—and set itself apart from the competition by producing and exhibiting films that showed audiences themselves. More than 90 percent of the films comprised by the Mitchell & Kenyon Collection are these local films, including films of everything from civic occasions to "phantom rides" on tram lines to the very popular "factory gate" films of workers leaving industrial mills. Although local filmmaking was a widespread practice in this period, it has received less scholarly attention because it was seldom covered in trade journals of the period and is underrepresented in film archives, the latter of which is changing, in part, due to Toulmin's efforts. When Mitchell & Kenyon films were discussed at all in previous studies, the focus of the conversation was on the company's historical reconstructions of events in the Boer War and other foreign battles. Although Mitchell & Kenyon continued to make films until 1913, the bulk of their known output took place between 1900 and 1905. By 1903, the company had already started to emphasize its fiction films, which Toulmin explains by suggesting that the novelty of the local film, like that of its relative, the actuality, had worn off.

Because the business records of the company were not recovered along with the films when Peter Worden found them in June of 1994, Toulmin had the difficult task of reconstructing the history of the films with very less information. Although much of the research into the films was collaborative, Toulmin does an incredible job here of integrating her archival research about the films with the social and political contexts in which the filmswere made. After several detailed introductory chapters on the company, its films, and their exhibition, Toulmin shows how the films reflected and were shaped by leisure and entertainment practices, sports, urban life, industrialization, [Begin Page 55] and the military. The book is handsomely illustrated with film stills and other materials that allow for the reader to closely examine the documents ably described in the text. Although scholarship on early cinema has benefited enormously from studies that place it in the context of other cultural practices of the time, Toulmin reverses the equation by showing where cinema, particularly the local film, fit in within the existing social and cultural order.

For example, Toulmin shows how the increase in leisure time led to the development of seaside resorts in the northwest of England, each of which became associated with a particular town or region where its visitors lived or the socioeconomic status they held in society. Through careful analysis of five films in the collection, Toulmin is able...