A Daring Daylight Robbery (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #11 extract: A Daring Daylight Robbery (1903)

An impressive early example of multiple location linearity in cinema, A Daring Daylight Burglary is one of the first archetypal chase/action shorts. In such, it follows a burglar who, as the title suggests, daringly tries to rob a house during the day before leading police officers on a chase. 

This is a significant film as it is one made by Frank Mottershaw whose films were an influence on Edwin S. Porter who would go on to release the first American western in this same year, the famous Great Train Robbery. In terms of structure and pace, Mottershaw's film feels much more mature thanks to a stronger sense of space and time jumps as well as a surge of energy gathered in the final few shots - though, this may just be a result of the varying frame rates (which may or may not have been corrected in the version I saw). Moreover, A Daring Daylight Burglary has a much stronger sense of realism thanks to the use of real locations, distinguishing it from a tradition of sensationalised and romantic retrospection that begun with Porter's first western.