"Come Along, Do!", otherwise known as "Exhibition", was originally a two-shot film, but the second shot is now lost. The two shots were both scenes in themselves; that is, they were set in two spatially separate locations. The first, which is intact, is the opening exterior scene of a seemingly lower-class elderly couple partaking in refreshments. Two signs above them read "Art Section", which points left, and "Refreshments", which points right. We can assume they've already been to the right. Two smartly-dressed young ladies pass through the scene and into the doorway to the Art Section. The elderly couple decides to follow suit.
Historians suspect that a direct cut was employed for transition between the two scenes, which would be characteristic of many of R.W. Paul's later productions and, in general, most subsequent movies. A catalogue description reads, "The interior is then shown with the old couple examining the pictures." Two stills of the second scene have survived from one of Paul's catalogues (these are available on the BFI's DVD "RW Paul: The Collected Films", but haven't been so in previous releases of the film, such as on "The Movies Begin" home video set). (Historian John Barnes also appears to have had a few frames of this scene, as he reproduced six frames of it in his third volume of "The Beginnings of the Cinema in England".) These stills show the couple in an art room, with a couple statues and some paintings against the wall. It appears to have been a stationary long shot as was the first scene. In the second still, the husband is gawking at a sculpture of a nude Venus while his wife tugs at his jacket to pull him away. She's saying, "Come Along, Do!"
Simple enough; it's humorous without being crude. It's a historical milestone in cinema, however, for being an early multi-shot film, perhaps the first fictional story film to fluidly display action across two separate scenes. Splices within a scene, generally for a trick effect, were already common, such as in the overly-long-titled films "The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots" (1895) and "Escamotage d'une dame au théâtre Robert Houdin" (The Vanishing Lady) (1896). But, not only were these cuts meant to be inconspicuous, they were within the same scene and shot--the same spatial and temporal dimensions. In a few of James White's films as early as 1897, such as "Return of Lifeboat", there are cuts between shots--shifting perspectives--but those are in nonfiction films and the transitions are rather awkward and not entirely linked to the action in a continuous way such as in "Come Along, Do!"
As is the case with many of the earliest and most elaborate films, this one is based on traditions in other media. As the BFI DVD points out, the film was likely based on a song of the same title, as well as, perhaps, a magic lantern show. John Barnes, in the aforementioned book, has also reproduced two stereographic photographs, which, indeed, bare a resemblance to the film's second scene; moreover, it was also entitled "Come Along, Do!" Therefore, the story here wasn't unique, but Robert W. Paul's introduction of action across two spatially separate scenes (an exterior and interior, no less) within a fictional narrative--the earliest such instance I know of--was a milestone in film history.
(Note: At the posting of this comment, IMDb and, perhaps, a few other sources suggest that James Williamson had a hand in this film. I've entered an update for IMDb, which will hopefully soon correct the error here. In addition to the lack of evidence (at least as far as I know) that Williamson was involved in this film, there is plenty that credits Paul with it. Moreover, it seems unlikely that the two would work together, as they were competitors who worked primarily in two different cities, and there's no suggestion that they ever worked together. Williamson worked in Brighton, and he wasn't that important of a filmmaker or innovator of fiction films yet. Paul, however, was the leading British producer of films at this time, and he had a studio in Muswell Hill, London, where he probably made this film.)
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