User Reviews

This is pretty funny. It's very short -- hardly more than a minute -- but entertaining in its own self-conscious way. A middle-aged woman shaped like a bottle of chianti walks into a room and, with the help of a maid, removes all of her clothes and takes a bath in what looks like black sand. The set is a clumsily painted attempt at nouveau art.

The woman never turns towards the camera after doffing her many garments but there's an untempting look at her naked behind, resembling a matched set of butcher block tables, before the maid drapes her in a large towel. Before they leave, the maid turns to look at the camera and giggles. Good old Méliès. Leave it to him to do something so silly that you get a kick out of watching it.

'After the Ball' is nothing spectacular of a movie. While it's one minute running time we can witness a servant helping to undress another woman before the bathing. Then the servant pours woman over with a water (that seems like an ash, but actually it is colored water, because Melies thought that regular water mightn't show on the film), and then helps to dry her.

I guess it might get some men's blood boiling while thinking about two women at the same room. But no, don't get your hopes very high. It's not a porno, not even very erotic.

'After the Ball' could also be called first movie that was made just because to be edgy, shocking, to offend some sort of people. Maybe Melies wanted to make a film for the sake of provoking. Here writer couldn't say, because he himself lacks more knowledge about that particular film by the early auteur.

I'm not making this up: This movie, from 1897, was the first ever "adult" film. It is very tame by today's standards. You could show it on tv with no problems. It involved two women, wearing skin colored suits. One of them is in a bath, and the other has a pitcher full of ashes - the ash is supposed to be water, but the water wouldn't show up on the 19th century film. So she pours the ashes over her and washes her. It's about a minute long. Melies advertised this in his film catalogue as ideal for bachelor parties.

I was very surprised to learn today that the first mainstream film featuring nudity was done by the great Georges Méliès! What makes it even more interesting is that after making this movie, the director married the woman who exposed herself to the camera!

The plot is practically non-existent...which is not unusual for 1897. A woman is going to take a bath and her servant helps her undress and pours water over her. All you see is the naked lady from behind...but I am sure audiences of the day would have been scandalized....especially here in the States where I wonder if it was ever shown.

If you are curious, the film is on YouTube...but it is not very salacious and it's very short as well.

A rather large woman has apparently been to a ball (the title tells us). She has a maid who helps her undress and get ready for a bath. We watch as she removes articles of clothing and actually stands nude in a kind of tub as her made pours water over her. There had to be some kind of response to this at the turn of the century. Melies was probably testing the waters a bit.

When the photographic camera was invented, it was not long before presumably a man got his girlfriend or wife to take her clothes off in order to take nude pictures.

Georges Melies 'After the Bath' is regarded as the first film containing nudity.

A maid prepares the bath for a lady (Mrs Melies, no less) who takes off her various garments and boy there are lots of them before she goes into the tin bath.

As the lady turns back we see her posterior although I do not understand why the maid throws some soil on her. Given the rather cheeky look the maid gives to the camera I cannot help but think that Melies was flirting with the boundaries of erotica.

1897. The very first nude scene ever filmed came out in that year, presented in this Méliès classic. Some call it, the first adult movie ever made. I wonder if there were outcries or any kind of negative reaction, censorship or something when of its release, there isn't much that can be found about it.

Here, more than a hundred years later it seems that cinema haven't evolved in terms of how nudity is presented and viewed by general public. Sure, nudity scenes are far more present and far more visible than what can be seen in "Après Le Bal" ("After the Ball"), sometimes showed as an art, other times merely exploitative, but it's always an issue that brings controversy, to some. And Méliès film is a perfect example that illustrates that a nude scene, actors naked on screen, shouldn't be a matter of negative discussions. They must be appreciated, seen in the same light as we see ourselves in our daily routine as we do, it's our body and there's nothing wrong with it.

The movie: a maid prepares the bath for his lady boss, who undresses and enters in a tin tub while the servant washes her. A simple action in the 1800's, a very natural thing. The cleverness comes from the way it was filmed, a behind perspective rather than frontal exposures, perhaps the main reason why this film escaped from harsh criticism.

Georges Méliès was a genius. He could take us to the moon, present devils and angels, wonderful magicians, men with floating heads and give us the human body as it is. That must have been a dazzling magic trick to many in the audience back in the day. 9/10

After the Ball (1897)

** (out of 4)

aka Apres le bal

As the title suggests, a woman returns home from a ball and begins to get undressed with the help of her servant. I guess this film would enter the genre of those early films that tried to show a little bit of nudity for the male viewers. There's some nudity in this film that will certainly make some viewers raise their eyes but this did happen in quite a few shorts of this era. There's really nothing here that stands out as being a film from Melies but this works best as a history lesson of early nudity on film. It's also worth noting that when you watch the film pay attention to the servant towards the end of the movie as she is looking off screen and talking, apparently the director, asking if he has finished filming.

Oh yes, this was so exciting to me, to see her butt!!! I mean I'd been waiting for such a long time to see her naked and then all of a sudden before I knew it she turned around and I could see it: another dream which came true. Thank you, prostitutes of the old age. I mean, she must be lying in her grave by now, but thanks to the invention of the movie system her past body still knows how to excite men! That's like watching a picture of the breasts of Marilyn Monroe: very superb.

"After the Ball" was actually not the very first film in the history of cinema to contain nudity. While many people often refer to it as such, calling it the 'first adult film', in this case Méliès was a little slow on the draw despite being groundbreaking in many different ways. So a different Frenchman (Albert Kirchner) actually beat him to the punch in the previous years' "Coucher de la Mariee". Reportedly, only a fragment of the latter film survives, (running at roughly two minutes now when it was originally seven) so it is impossible to be certain on whether or not it contained nudity. Thus, about all that can be viewed today of that short is a somewhat tame striptease. Since it was easy to provoke audiences back then just by showing a couple kissing or a bit of a lady's ankle, many of the pornographic shorts of the time rarely went to such lengths as in these two films. But there was a limit, and Méliès didn't quite surpass it. Notice how he blatantly keeps the woman's body stocking on. Observe the lack of frontal exposures. This is still an extremely tame short looking at it today. I'm not even sure if it was shown to that many people in the first place.

The film is simply a presentation of a maid helping a woman undress, relieve herself of those horrid corsets, and bathe in a tub for a few seconds before drying her off with a towel. From my conclusions, there has to be a reason why it didn't drive the public wild. After all, the Edison Company's peepshows sometimes got censored and they were even tamer than this. You'd think someone would know about its initial reactions.

The idea of the erotic film wasn't exactly new to Méliès, either. Previously, and in the exact same year, he had filmed "Peeping Tom at the Seaside" as well as "A Hypnotist at Work" which was made right after the release of this. Both of these shorts are now considered lost films, so it appears that this movie may be the only successor to an erotic film by this director. After all, the stag film was not a popular genre in Méliès's career. And one has to wonder exactly why he was still experimenting with actualities and such even though he was already aware of the film edit. Likewise here. It's obvious the director was still playing with his new toy and had no idea what people would think. So he says, "eh, why not? After all, the worst it could do is cause a few divorces!" (I am joking. I doubt married men were allowed to see this by their wives in the first place).

Nowadays, "After the Ball" is probably going to be viewed as just exploitative (i.e. as a way of getting peoples' attention by provoking them). Considering how tame it looks now, you could probably use it to teach film classes about the earliest types of pornography. And about all those layers of clothing that women wore then, don't forget that. It's also one of the few shorts by the director that doesn't star him, which is probably why it doesn't feel like a Méliès movie at all.