セシル・ヘプワース

セシル・ヘップワース（Cecil_Hepworth、セシル・ミルトン・ヘップワース、Cecil Milton Hepworth、1874年3月19日 - 1953年2月9日）は、イギリスの映画監督、プロデューサー、脚本家。

セシル・ヘプワース Cecil Hepworth
本名	Cecil Milton Hepworth
生年月日	(1874-03-19) 1874年3月19日
没年月日	(1953-02-09) 1953年2月9日（78歳没）
出身地	イギリス・ランベス,[1]
死没地	イギリス・グリーンフォード（英語版）、ミドルセックス
職業	映画監督、プロデューサー、脚本家
活動期間	1896年 - 1926年

英国映画産業の創設者の一人であり、ヘップワース・スタジオで 1920年代まで映画を作り続けた。 1923年に会社ヘップワース・ピクチャー・プレイズが管財人となった。

代表作に、ルイス・キャロルの児童書『不思議の国のアリス』の最初の映画化である『不思議の国のアリス』(1903年)^[2]などがある。

歴史

1913 ad for Vivaphone

May Clark as Alice (left) and Norman Whitten (right) as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland (1903), the first film version of the story

A commemorative British Film Institute plaque at Cantelowes Road, NW1, where Hepworth lived as a child

Hepworth was born in Lambeth, in present-day South London. His father, Thomas Cradock Hepworth, was a famous magic lantern showman and author. Cecil Hepworth became involved in the early stages of British filmmaking, working for both Birt Acres and Charles Urban, and wrote the first British book on the subject in 1897. With his cousin Monty Wicks he set up the production company Hepworth and Co. (also known as "Hepwix" after the word mark in its trade logo), which was later renamed the Hepworth Manufacturing Company (officially: Hepworth Film Manufacturing Company), and then Hepworth Picture Plays. In 1899 they built a small film studio in Walton-on-Thames, Hepworth Studios. The company produced about three films a week, sometimes with Hepworth directing. He was associated with Percy Stow from 1901-1903 who specialized in trick films.^[3]

His film Rescued by Rover (1905), co-directed with Lewin Fitzhamon and starring a collie in the title role, was a huge financial success. The film is now regarded as an important development in film grammar, with shots being effectively combined to emphasize the action. Hepworth was also one of the first to recognize the potential of film stars, both animal and human, with several recurring characters appearing in his films.

By 1910, Hepworth was also the inventor of Vivaphone, an early sound on disk system for adding sound to motion pictures. The device used phonograph records to record and play back the sound. Hepworth's Vivaphone was distributed in Britain and also in the United States and Canada.^[4][5]

The company continued making popular films into the 1920s, despite Hepworth's now unchanging and increasingly old-fashioned film style. Boosted by the international success of Alf's Button (1919), the company went public to fund a large studio development. He failed to raise the necessary capital and, also suffering the box office failure of Comin' Thro the Rye (1923), the company went into receivership the next year. All of the original film negatives in Hepworth's possession were melted down by the receiver in order to sell the silver, and his feature films have been considered lost for many decades. However, an original 35mm. print of his 1920 film Helen of Four Gates was located in a film archive in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 2008.^[6]

代表作

公開年	作品名	備考
1897	The Egg-Laying Man
1900	The Beggar's Deceit
1900	How It Feels to Be Run Over
1900	Explosion of a Motor Car
1900	Rough Sea
1903	不思議の国のアリス Alice in Wonderland
1904	A Day in the Hayfields
1905	Rescued by Rover
1905	Baby's Toilet
1913	The Jewel Thieves Outwitted
1913	David Copperfield
1913	The Cloister and the Hearth
1913	Dr. Trimball's Verdict
1915	The Baby on the Barge

• The Man Who Stayed at Home (1915)
• Annie Laurie (1916)
• Molly Bawn (1916)
• The Marriage of William Ashe (1916)
• The Cobweb (1917)
• The American Heiress (1917)
• City of Beautiful Nonsense (producer) (1919)
• The Refugee (1918)
• Broken in the Wars (1919)
• The Forest on the Hill (1919)
• Helen of Four Gates (1920)
• The Narrow Valley (1921)
• Tansy (1921)
• The Tinted Venus (1921)
• Wild Heather (1921)
• Comin' Thro the Rye (1923)
• Strangling Threads (1923)
• Mist in the Valley (1923)