During a trip to London I visited the Victoria and Albert Museum, and as part of the many interesting exhibitions I saw in there I found a small room showing very old pictures with scenes of everyday life, one of those films was this one and, due to lack of time, it was the only one I saw. With no ratings at IMDb and after being unable to find information about it in the internet, I would have guessed this was a lost film if I haven't seen it at the museum, so I am very glad to have found this rarity that has been seen by so little people, I'm always attracted to obscure films.
The movie is, like so many back in those years, a simple sequence recorded by a still camera that recorded events just as they happened, in this case an amateur Cricket game played at the deck of a ship, the center of attention is a lad called Jack, who hits the ball and runs in the narrow space where the game is played while he is surrounded by dozens of people watching him and his mates.
I would certainly love to have more information about the film, like for example who was Jack, and why was it considered interesting that he was playing Cricket, also it would be great to have some information about the ship, and (that lack of information is on me) it would be good to have a better understanding of Cricket before watching the film. These data would make this picture far more interesting to the documentary that, judged as a film, is nothing special.
By 1900, when this was made, filmmakers were already experimenting with far more interesting things, people like Georges Mèlies used marvelous visual tricks to marvel the audience and scripts to tell great stories were already in development; in just a few years masterpieces of early cinema like The Great Train Robbery, Voyage dans la Lune and Barbe-Bleue were going to be released and movies like Jack's game of Cricket were about to become history. This movie reflects a kind of documentary cinema that was about to disappear and its cinematographic interest lies on that, one of the last examples of the kind of films made in the XIX century. Besides that and on a broader pint of view this is interesting in regards of the fact that made it part of the Victoria and Albert exhibition, it is a way to see the everyday life of people over one hundred years ago, and considering this it is worth to see it. So if you are in London, visit the Victoria and Albert and look for the little cinema screen, there you'll be able to see this film and some others as little seen as this.
The movie is, like so many back in those years, a simple sequence recorded by a still camera that recorded events just as they happened, in this case an amateur Cricket game played at the deck of a ship, the center of attention is a lad called Jack, who hits the ball and runs in the narrow space where the game is played while he is surrounded by dozens of people watching him and his mates.
I would certainly love to have more information about the film, like for example who was Jack, and why was it considered interesting that he was playing Cricket, also it would be great to have some information about the ship, and (that lack of information is on me) it would be good to have a better understanding of Cricket before watching the film. These data would make this picture far more interesting to the documentary that, judged as a film, is nothing special.
By 1900, when this was made, filmmakers were already experimenting with far more interesting things, people like Georges Mèlies used marvelous visual tricks to marvel the audience and scripts to tell great stories were already in development; in just a few years masterpieces of early cinema like The Great Train Robbery, Voyage dans la Lune and Barbe-Bleue were going to be released and movies like Jack's game of Cricket were about to become history. This movie reflects a kind of documentary cinema that was about to disappear and its cinematographic interest lies on that, one of the last examples of the kind of films made in the XIX century. Besides that and on a broader pint of view this is interesting in regards of the fact that made it part of the Victoria and Albert exhibition, it is a way to see the everyday life of people over one hundred years ago, and considering this it is worth to see it. So if you are in London, visit the Victoria and Albert and look for the little cinema screen, there you'll be able to see this film and some others as little seen as this.
