The Lost Child is a 1904 American short silent comedy film produced by the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company and directed by Wallace McCutcheon, Sr.[1] A mother sets down her child in the front yard and goes back into the house for a brief moment.
[3] John L. Fell reports that in November 1904, The Mirror applauded The Lost Child as a remarkable picture.
The camera pans left as she goes out of the garden out into the street where she sees a man with a basket.
Two women walk away from the camera on a suburban street, they pass a lady with a pram.
Medium close-up of the man opening his bag and showing he is only carrying a pet.
The mother enters the garden with part of the group of pursuers and the camera pans to the right as they walk towards the doghouse where the mother finds her baby and hold him in her arms.
The Lost Child has been singled out by several commentators as one of the most interesting early American chase films, possibly inspired by earlier British film such as Desperate Poaching Affray.
Joyce E. Jesionowski mentions it as one of the best chase films made by the Biograph Company before the arrival of D.W. Griffith, showing "a firm grasp of continuity cutting" and where "the chase is not a device that hypes the joke, it is the vehicle of the joke.
"[5] She furthers refers to the film as a "good example of pre-Griffith accumulation chase" where the distraught mother is joined by a line of heteroclit pursuers and where "activity is extended from background to foreground to exploit the spatial extent of the frame.
"[7] Frank Krutnik and Steve Neale mention The Lost Child as an example of the fact that in 1904, chase was a key device in the cinema, because it "marked the increasing length of films at this time and allowed them to move in the direction of edited narration, articulating one particular kind of narrative action across a variety of shots, locations, and spaces".
The chase was at the time "the narration par excellence" and also constituted "a new kind of slapstick attraction".