I have tried in recent reviews to emphasise two points about watching early films (although they apply equally to watching films from any period or from any culture that is not one's own). First, one should not assume that people in the past were idiots and necessarily pleased with anything they were shown. There is plenty of evidence to show that this view is false, that audiences were just as critical of films as modern audiences and voted with their feet when they thought the films being produced were no good. A good film is a good film whenever it is made, and a bad film is a bad one.
As many bad films as good films have survived form the "silent" era and Méliès' films are no exception to that rule. There are good films amongst them (some excellent) and there are also some poor ones and we need not hesitate to say so nor need we assume that a contemporary audience necessarily felt any differently about them.
But (and it is a big but), when we look at films made in the past (and particularly in the relatively distant past)), we do need to try and understand as much as possible of the context in which they were produced and sometimes that requires a little bit of work......
This film, it is clear, is not a classic. But none of the people reviewing it so far seem to have asked themselves what it is and what the context might have been for the making of it. Méliès owned and projected his films in a theatre that had previously belonged to the great French magician, Robert-Houdin and the second poster being pasted is for that very theatre. In other words, this is a brief advertising film. Which immediately I think changes our attitude somewhat towards it, does it not?
We have still a little work to do. This films was rediscovered in 2004 in the archives of the French Communist party (PCF) which have puzzled some researchers. I don't know why. It is a pleasantly anti-authoritarian little film. What virtually no researchers seem to have asked themselves - perhaps they thought the question unanswerable - is why the film opens with a shot of a milestone indicating that it is 125 kilometres fom Paris.
I shall now attempt to answer that question. Méliès was in the habit of shutting down his theatre in the month of August so that he and Mme Méliès and the two little Méliès could all go off for their annual holiday at the seaside. Normandy was their favourite holiday destination. They went there in 1896 and, for the first time, Méliès had his camera with him and used the opportunity to shoot a whole series of films. He filmed boats going in and out of Trouville harbour, he filmed the market there, he filmed the beach during a storm at Villers-sur-Mer, he shot two or three films of the docks at Le Havre (one of which he seems to have doctored so he could pretend it was shot at Marseille) and at Le Havre he also shot a panorama which is the earliest known case of a film made from a moving boat - two months before the more famous Lumière examples shot by Constant Girel and Alexandre Promio.
Naturally these films would have been exhibited at his theatre on his return in September as well as being made available to other exhibitors (hence the Marseille fake) via his catalogue. This film was not filmed in Normandy; it ws almost certainly filmed at Montreuil, where he was constructing his studio, on his return. But it is meant to be Normandy. Not Trouville, not Villers-sur-Mer, nor yet Le Havre but the administrative capital of Normandy Rouen, which not only happens to be 125 kilometres from Paris but which was also well known at the time for its many casernes (army camps). Have a little look on the internet sometime and you will find several contemporary postcards that bear witness to the fact; you may even come across one - it exists! - where the caserne has a "défense d'afficher" (it means "no bill-stickers" and has nothing to do with "defense show") sign on its wall.
There were many films made showing rival bill-stickers fighting it out (by the Lumières, by Gaumont, by Pathé, by the Czech Jan Krízenecký and by the Roach Studios in the US as late as 1923) but that does not necessarily mean that they were all imitating Méliès. The law in France under which these "Défense d'afficher" signs were put up dated from 1881 and such comic sketches had doubtless been part of the vaudeville repertoire long before anyone had even heard of the cinema.
The originality of the Méliès lies 1. in the idea of using such a sketch as a means of advertising his theatre 2. the typically surreal touch in the form of this absurd sentry whose sole purpose in life seems to be to guard this tiny stretch of wall where bill-sticking is forbidden but where, thanks to his total ineptitude, the sticker is going to have no difficulty in posting the advertisement for Méliès' Paris theatre.
The 1897 film made by Georgs Hatôt and Alexandre Promio for the Lumières, Colleurs d'affiches, also has a bill for the Lumière cinématographe being posted and the idea may well in this case have been suggested by the Méliès film but the Lumière film has a slightly different purpose. Everywhere they went, both in France and abroad, the Lumière operators were coming up against other pirate-operators claiming to be exhibiting "the cinématographe", the Lumières own patent system. So they made this short film to warn people against such imitations. One set of bill-stickers is shown putting up a sign for a false cinématographe, which the other set cover with a poster for the genuine article and the two sets of bill-stickers then have a bit of a set-to.
The other nice thing about the Méliès film is that it gives an unusual insight into the way the films were or might have been presented. Programmes were not silent. They were invariably accompanied by music but often also by commentary. This was particularly the case with Méliès (also a magician, remember), who gave great importance to what he called "boniments" ("patter" in English), which is still the word used by French magicians to this day. In this case no one in the audience was going to understand why they were seeing a milestone marked Paris 125 kilometres unless it was explained to them - as it would surely have been.
So, now, if you please, Messieurs Dames, imagine the scene at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin (are you sitting comfortably?) when, perhaps just before or after the intermission, this little advertising film is to be shown as a prelude of course to all the various films taken by Méliès during his hols . Ah, says the bonimenteur (surely Méliès himself) before you go for your cup of hot chocolate, Messieurs Dames, let me just tell you about something very strange that I saw when I was on holiday last year. We were going through the town of Rouen......and then the film runs.
It makes a nice little entrée to the main series of views when shown in his own theatre; it makes a humorous advert for his theatre when shown elsewhere (this particular film was shown in Valencia in Spain on the 14th September).
Now maybe I am just a gullible idiot like all these people back in 1899, but I think I might have been very much amused.
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