This is another of the films from the series-C section of the Gaumont catalogue, made not by Alice guy but by Georges Hatot and Gaston Bretaeau with Henri Vallouy, a Gaumont employee, acting as cinematographer. Breteau himself seems to have taken the main role in most of the films and here plays the woman in drag who is terrorised by the X-ray camera at a customs checkpoint while trying to smuggle contraband through.
The science of radiology and the art of cinema are exact contemporaries and the exhibition of films often had to compete in the early days with the exhibition of X-rays in the fairs,stalls and halls where both were shown. There were several films with reference to X-rays including G. A. Smith's The X-Rays (1897), the Lumière film Le Squelette joyeux (1898), Wallace McCutcheon's The X-Ray Mirror (1899, lost?) and the lost Méliès film of 1900, Le Rayon X and, more seriously, X-Ray Cinematography of Frog's Legs (1896-1897) and Dr. Macintyre's X-Ray Cabinet (1909).
The science of radiology and the art of cinema are exact contemporaries and the exhibition of films often had to compete in the early days with the exhibition of X-rays in the fairs,stalls and halls where both were shown. There were several films with reference to X-rays including G. A. Smith's The X-Rays (1897), the Lumière film Le Squelette joyeux (1898), Wallace McCutcheon's The X-Ray Mirror (1899, lost?) and the lost Méliès film of 1900, Le Rayon X and, more seriously, X-Ray Cinematography of Frog's Legs (1896-1897) and Dr. Macintyre's X-Ray Cabinet (1909).