Mr. Pecksniff Fetches the Doctor

The film is composed of five shots taken by a fixed camera.

1. Full shot of a theatre-like set representing a bedroom.

2. Outdoor set. A street with a row of houses with front gardens.

3. Full shot of a theatre-like set representing the facade of a surgery.

Screenshot from the film

4. Full shot of a theatre-like set of a parlour.

5. Medium close-up of the maid laughing while holding the three babies (only one them really looking like a newborn).^[1]

The story is pretty simple but has an amusing twist at the end. No intertitle is necessary to follow it. No camera movements are used but continuity editing allows to show an action continuing over different spaces and the use of medium close-up makes it possible to have a good view of the expressions of the actors. While shot 2 is filmed in a real street, the other shots use community-theatre-grade painted backdrops.^[3]

The name of the protagonist is taken from one of the characters in Charles Dickens' novel Martin Chuzzlewit but the film bears otherwise no relation to Dickens' novel.^[4]

• Mr. Pecksniff Fetches the Doctor at IMDb
• Mr. Pecksniff Fetches the Doctor (1904) at A Cinema History