A Kiss in the Tunnel (1899)

(Viewers are advised to use the 'watch in high quality' option for this video).

'A Kiss in the Tunnel' is available to buy as part of the BFI DVD 'Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers' - http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_118.html

This story derives from a popular magic lantern slide show and shows a couple in a railway carriage, going into a dark, Freudian tunnel, taking the opportunity to steal a kiss. As the train emerges into the light the couple move apart in a guilty fashion, and although scarcely enough to make your Victorian grandmother blush, it gives the scene its slight frisson of naughtiness. (Bryony Dixon)

For more information about 'A Kiss in the Tunnel' see http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/444230/index.html

You can watch over 1200 other complete films and TV programmes from the BFI National Archive free of charge in the Mediatheque at BFI Southbank, London and from October 2008 at the new QUAD centre for art and film in Derby -- http://www.bfi.org.uk/mediatheque http://www.derbyquad.co.uk/bfi-mediatheque

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• BFI
• Valentine
• Valentines
• Valentine's
• Day
• Romance
• Victorian
• Britain
• Train
• Transport
• Silent
• Early
• Film
• Kiss

[Lemon020202]

i CAN'T FIND ANY VIDEOS AROUND 1879 WERE THERE ANY VIDEOS BACK THEN. i WOULD LIKE TO FIND OLDER ONES. LOL. WOW....PEOPLE WERE MODEST BACK THEN.

[BFIfilms]

@Lemon020202 The earliest films (in the sense that we'd understand the term now) date from the mid-1890s. However, by 1879 Eadweard Muybridge had started work on his groundbreaking motion studies, and if you look up his Wikipedia entry you'll see that someone has turned his sequences of still photographs into authentic moving images.

[Eddy2730]

One slight error: This film was actually produced in 1898, not '99.

[BFIfilms]

@Eddy2730 The G.A Smith film was released in November 1899 with a reccomendation that the 'Kiss' scene be bookended with phantom ride shots of trains gong into and out of a tunnel

Bamforth hastily filmed a copy with the train shots on either end of the kissing scene attached in December 1899.

[Provocateurzz]

Well, I must say..I am truly shocked!! Smoking.... kissing.... sharing a private compartment.... whatever next??!!! A revealing glimpse of ankle? The very notion itself fills me with horror.Now, where did I put those smelling salts.....

[goshnessmaggy]

mothers at the time: "oh dear, i can't believe the filth they allow in the moving pictures!" :D

[1craigmt]

That guy has some fucking balls. Not only was that kind of shit frowned on but just goes up and does that shit with a tophat, bulky coat, cigar and kickass mustache.

Nowadays guys trying to play the ladies all use the same formula: wear basketball shorts and act angry. No originality. No balls.

[cadmus98]

If people back then saw a modern porno, they'd probably die.

[grig24x]

It was rated XXX back then. I wonder if baby Hitler was stimulating himself behind the scene.

[CowboysDfan09]

Looks like someones getting laid tonight.

[MDthornton83]

Interesting film.

[elementsk8punk]

-Porn from 1899- ;)

[puffugnegne]

@Eddy2730 stronzate

[noonsight2010]

Utter depravity! And to think children might get to see this.

[excavtrooper]

Tickle her chin, yes, that's right, tickle, tickle, ....tickle, tickle, now suck this you slapper, we're in a tunnel, noooo!, not me cigar, the one eyed pink thing sticking out me westcut!.

[itsSTELLAAA]

weird, I wore that very outfit yesterday...