User Reviews

Segundo de Chomón directed "The Charmer" and it's a weird little story. I assumed it was about a snake charmer but instead of snakes, this guy was wrangling a gigantic caterpillar! He then shoved it into what appears to be an enormous cocoon. Then, moments later, out pops a lady with butterfly wings! She then flies about on strings (though you cannot see the strings) and soon she's joined by other ladies who all fly about. Then comes the weird ending--which you can discover if you watch this amazingly strange and rather pointless film. I say pointless because there really wasn't a lot of plot--just ladies flitting about like butterflies. The only really positive thing about the film were the very vibrant colors. The Pathé Brothers studio had created an assembly line process where rooms filled with women hand-painted each film cel using stencils. It's very striking to see this today and the colors on this one appear to have maintained themselves well over the years. So, you have a pretty dumb film with lovely color.

While Segundo de Chomón was very different in style and effects from his competitors, such as Georges Méliès, sometimes he would copy his rival's work. While this is rare in his career, "The Charmer" is one of these ripoffs and bears a large resemblance to Méliès's "The Brahman and the Butterfly" from 1901. While made 6 years later, this film in undeniably an outright copy of the other film and while more elaborate in sets, costumes, and actors, this is inexcusable.

The film's set-up has a Brahman stuffing a giant caterpillar into a cocoon, which magically turns into a butterfly (in the Méliès original, the butterfly came out of the cocoon, but there's not much difference anyhow). Then, when he tries to catch her she makes more butterfly women appear (one of which had no wings but still pretended as though she had). The twist at the end is not new at all and it is pretty much what we saw before in the other film.

The main difference between the two is the fact that in the other film there was only one butterfly. Still not enough to make this one original. There's some nice coloring and costumes which make it a better production, and while it is a nice film to watch visually, it drags on a little too long and tends to pad certain parts--especially the butterflies flying around. It is interesting, however, to compare both films and observe the various differences.