Following the precedent set by Harriet McKay in her blog post dated May 19th, I thought I’d promote the idea of inter-blog exchange and respond to Richard Dunn’s post below. His introduction to ‘Telescope stories: caught on film’ was really interesting and made me think about the conspicuous and repeated presence of the camera in the post-war cruise film (my PhD research, based at the NMM and University of Sheffield, focuses on post-war images of Oceanic Cruises in the NMM Film Archive). Not quite a telescope, but – I would argue – the tourist’s modern equivalent.


World At Three (1966), Dir. Frederic Goode, P&O
Frederic Goode’s World At Three (1966) at one moment sees the passengers of P&O’s Canberra decent onto the streets of San Francisco. Rather than offering us point-of-view shots of the city’s undulating boulevards, Goode retains a staunch focus on the passengers themselves. With cameras glued to their faces, these zealous photographers suck up every last drop of the city’s vibrant street life. Their identities are obscured as their instruments protect them from both the unknown of the city streets and the spectator’s own prying gaze.

The World Is Your Oyster (1965), Dir: Richard Lester, Union Castle
Richard Lester’s Union Castle film The World Is Your Oyster (1965) also contains the repeated motif of the camera. At certain moments it is seemingly used to make sense of the strange landscapes and people that are encountered. The woman in the above images surveys a coastline and a group of foreign children. The camera acts as her surrogate eye, sanitising these sites of otherness via the act of photography’s familiarity and its implied powers of ownership and appropriation. This kind of moment reminds me of Susan Sontag’s theories of the tourists’ camera as gun. Like the colonial explorer with the rifle, the tourist wields a camera to similar, symbolic effect.

Aweigh to the Sun, Union Castle
Finally, Union Castle’s Aweigh to the Sun (1960s) observes the film’s central couple as they visit an African safari park. Again, a camera forms a centrepiece of the sequence, as a man peers through his car window at a group of lions. Antagonised by the presence of these British tourists and their recording equipment, the lion charges at the car, causing the man to hastily and comically wind up his window. Here, the untamed forces of nature bite back against the western tourist, and the camera’s protective shroud is exposed as a dangerous fallacy.

As a great film fan, I’ve had enormous fun over the past couple of years trying to spot telescopes in the movies, and have been able to call it research for the book the Museum recently published on the history of the telescope.

Pair of stills from ‘As Seen through the Telescope’
One of my favourite is an early film called As Seen Through the Telescope, directed in 1900 by George Albert Smith. It’s a simple tale in which a dodgy old man uses his telescope to have a good look at a couple across the street. It’s also interesting as an early example of action cut across successive shots, with the viewer sharing what he sees: the young man’s hands caressing the woman’s foot and ankle, shown within a circular mask to mimic the telescopic view. In case you’re worried, the voyeur doesn’t go unrewarded – at the end of the film the younger man punches him. Perhaps that’s why it was called L’astronome indiscret in France.
For those with time to spare, here are some of the telescopic films I’ve enjoyed:
Rear Window – A classic Hitchcock which explores the ethical issues raised by our irrestistible urge to peek at our neighbours
A Short Film about Love – Krzysztof Kieslowski takes on the same issues with less laughs
Notorious – another great Hitchcock. Check out the scene at the races – a witty touch with the binoculars
Storm over Mont Blanc – Leni Riefenstahl falls in love with a meteorologist, saves his life and abandons her large telescope for the kitchen
Contact – Jodie Foster wrestles with science, faith and telescopic evidence
The Dish – you’ll believe a radio telescope can be a film star
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End – not the greatest film, but it does use telescopes for some really unsophisticated humour
For those interested, I’ll be talking about some telescopic film stars in a couple of weeks at our conference, The Long View: 400 Years of the Telescope.