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1900 film shows viewers what it feels like to be hit by a car — and ends with a cryptic message about pleasing Mother [1]

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Date: 2025-07-16

Cecil Hepworth's "How It Feels to Be Run Over" is one of cinema's earliest experiments with both car crashes and on-screen text. In the minute-long film, shot from a stationary camera on a dirt road, we see a horse cart pass safely by. Then, we see a car driven by Hepworth veering directly toward the lens. After the collision, the screen goes black and displays what may be the first-ever movie intertitle: "?!!!? ! Oh! Mother will be pleased."

This film was part of a fascinating genre of early "accident pictures." This category of films were meant to capture audiences' morbid curiosity about car crashes. As mentioned in the Public Domain Review, these included Hepworth's "Explosion of a Motor Car" (1900) and the Lumière brothers' famous "L'arrivée d'un train" (1896), which apparently caused viewers to run from theaters fearing an oncoming train.

This early film lets viewers safely experience the terror of an accident from the safety of a sofa, even if only for 60 suspenseful seconds."When we watch this film," wrote media scholar Richard Howells, "we are at the same time watching the cinema discover its potential to communicate in new ways." Watching this film on my small computer screen makes it difficult to see if it still has the same effect it once did on people. I wonder if I'd feel more jumpy watching it on a large theater screen.



See also: Taking the 6th edition of post-apocalyptic vehicle combat game Car Wars for a test drive

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