User Reviews

"Highly amusing and bound to create laughter" Above is a blurb from the Edison Company describing their film "Aunt Sallie's Wonderful Bustle". Well, perhaps it did create a lot of laughs in 1901, but today it isn't particularly funny. However, I can forgive it a lot, as the film is from 1901--when sets (like this one) and plots (also like this one) were very, very primitive and simple.

The film begins with Aunt Sally and a man walking across what looks like a brick bridge. Suddenly a gust catches her hat and she falls of trying to catch it. Then, by reversing the film, she magically pops back onto the platform--and then flies off again--with her bustle and bloomers exposed. That's really all there is to this one. It's not a terrible film and offers something more than some of the VERY mundane offerings of the day (such as a woman feeding a baby and other such exciting topics).

It's a pretty good trick film for 1901, and in that year the joke would have been mildly bawdy and heartfelt. Victorian priggishness was near its height, although weakened a touch by the raciness of the Gay '90s.... what with women on bicycles and showing their ankles in an era when women knitted little booties to put on piano legs, which were called 'limbs' because the three-letter word was even worse than the four-letter one. Add in the exaggerated form that the bustle is gave to women's forms, and something had to give.

Good thing that Aunt Sallie's bustle was made of rubber. That prevents all sorts of accidents, even today.

Aunt Sallie's Wonderful Bustle (1901)

*** (out of 4)

Aunt Sallie is standing with a gentleman when a gust of wind comes along and blows her bonnet off her head. She decides to follow it but this is where the fun starts. This Edison short is another trick film in the same vein as something we'd expect from Melies. The special effects here aren't really that special but I did get a kick out of what happened after the fall. You expect a certain thing to happen but it never does and instead we get a joke that really comes out of no where. The film runs just under a minute so there's not much story wise but what's here is pretty good.