Cecil M. Hepworth
Production
Biography
Cecil Milton Hepworth (19 March 1874 – 9 February 1953) was a British film director, producer and screenwriter. He was among the founders of the British film industry and continued making films into the 1920s at his Hepworth Studios. His works include Alice in Wonderland (1903), the first film adaptation of Lewis Carroll's children's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Known For
Cut-out animated parody of Hamlet by pioneering British animator Anson Dyer.
Oh'phelia: A Cartoon Burlesque
This is the first movie version of the famous story. Alice dozes in a garden, awakened by a dithering white rabbit in waistcoat with pocket watch. She follows him down a hole and finds herself in a hall of many doors.
Alice in Wonderland
A dog leads its master to his kidnapped baby.
Rescued by Rover
Documentary on the process of hay-making, from the cutting of the grass to the stacking of the hay.
A Day in the Hayfields
A Scottish Laird weds a peasant's niece who falls in love with his nephew.....
Annie Laurie
As the camera looks down an open road, a horse and carriage approaches, and passes by to one side of the field of view. Soon afterwards, an automobile comes up the road, straight towards the camera. As it gets nearer, the occupants start to wave frantically, but can a collision be avoided?
How It Feels to Be Run Over
HELEN OF FOUR GATES was made in Hebden Bridge in 1920 by silent film pioneer Cecil M. Hepworth, based on a popular novel of the same name. Reportedly highly successful when it first opened, the film would later fall into obscurity, with all copies believed to be destroyed. In 2007, a print was discovered in a vault in Canada.
Helen of Four Gates
A scientist dreams of prehistoric monsters. He awakes in a cavern. A dinosaur chases him, even though he tries to shoot it with his revolver. The chase continues onto the surface. The professor meets a group of prehistoric women, who flee when other monsters appear. The professor's wife finds him sleeping in the laboratory, surrounded by fossils, and wakes him with water from a siphon. This short film is only viewable at the BFI, and its generally believed to be the first film depiction of dinosaurs, here accomplished through the use of simple pantomime costumes.
Prehistoric Peeps
A boy breaks his sister's doll and it mends, grows, tears him up and eats him.
The Doll's Revenge
Dog Rover, from Rescued by Rover fame, chases a kidnapper's car and while he is in a pub, drives it safely home and thus saves the baby.
The Dog Outwits the Kidnapper
Molly Bawn. British silent drama movie. Directed by Cecil M Hepworth. Starring Alma Taylor, Stewart Rome an Violet Hopson. adaptation of the1878 Irish novel of the same name by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford. Molly Bawn the novel by M. W. Hungerford contains her most famous idiom: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." It is also referenced in chapter 8 of James Joyce's Ulysses.
Molly Bawn
A professor takes daughter's suitor's camera by mistake.
How Things Do Develop
A jealous girl breaks up a friend's engagement with a fake wedding announcement.
Comin' Thro the Rye
An Essec sailor helps a girl save an heir from his crooked uncle.
The House of Marney
A boy uses a professor's liquid to make objects transparent.
The Magic Glass
The story of a small valley community that is narrow minded and those who wish to leave it on the train that regularly hurries from the narrow valley.
The Narrow Valley
A policeman is run over by an automobile
How to Stop a Motor Car
An early trick film where a car explodes and body parts fall from the sky. A policeman witnesses and attempts to piece the remains back together.
Explosion of a Motor Car
A mesmerist, obsessed with putting a beautiful woman under his power, hypnotizes her to try to force her to kill her fiancé. His plans are altered with the appearance of a deadly serpent.
The Basilisk
A crofter's daughter has a child by an outlaw and is condemned to death when it is stolen by a midwife's mad daughter.