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 woman's ankle through a telescope. The three-shot comedy, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "uses a similar technique to that which G.A. Smith pioneered in Grandma's 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 point-of-view close-ups in the context of a coherent narrative (which is this film's main advance on Grandma's Reading Glass)." "Smith's experiments with editing," Brooke concludes, "were ahead of most contemporary film-makers, and in retrospect it can clearly be seen that he was laying the foundations of film grammar as we now understand it."^[1][2]

As Seen Through a Telescope
Screenshot from the film
Directed by	George Albert Smith
Produced by	George Albert Smith
Cinematography	George Albert Smith
Production company	G. A. Smith
Distributed by	Warwick Trading Company
Release date	September 1900 (1900-09)
Running time	59 seconds
Country	United Kingdom
Language	Silent

As Seen Through a Telescope

Production

The film was shot in Furze Hill, Hove, England outside the entrance to St. Ann's Well Gardens, where Smith had his studio.