A Woman Undressing

A treat for Victorian voyeurs - and Britain's oldest erotic film?

Is this Britain's oldest erotic film? Modern viewers might question how genuinely erotic it is, but it certainly pushes the boundaries of what was permissible in 1896 - and there's little doubt that it was intended to titillate. Erotica being what it is, it's possible that other (and perhaps more explicit) examples exist in private hands, but this is certainly the oldest surviving British film of its kind we know of.

Also known (and previously published on BFI Player) as A Victorian Lady in Her Boudoir, the film is credited to Brighton-based pioneer Esmé Collings - making it one of very few of his films to survive. Alongside rather more demure films from around the same time, such as Grandma's Reading Glass (1900) and As Seen Through a Telescope (1900), it demonstrates that early filmmakers - even in these comparatively inhibited islands - were quick to realise the new medium's implicit voyeurism.