The first volume of my Film History Essentials series, collecting all 100 entries on films of the 19th century, is now available in book form, both as a paperback and for Kindle! The book is revised and edited, with some new images, additional details about the films at the beginning of each entry, a new introduction, and a full index in the back.
I believe this is a valuable and entertaining resource for film fans, and I have worked hard these past few months to add value as well as convenience to the published version. If you have enjoyed or benefited from any part of this series so far, I would certainly appreciate it if you would consider supporting its continuation. Either way, thanks for being here!
A man and a woman sit across from each other in a railroad car, reading. When the train enters a tunnel, the man begins flirting with the woman, then goes over to kiss her. After kissing her a few times, the man accidentally sits down on his hat. Noticing the end of the tunnel ahead, the two quickly recompose themselves and pretend that nothing happened between them.
Essentials:
In the 1910s, Russian film theorist Lev Kuleshov demonstrated what would become known as the “Kuleshov effect.” Audiences were shown multiple sequences of three shots. The first and third shot were the same image of a man’s face with a neutral expression, while the middle shot was different each time, showing a bowl of soup, a child lying in a coffin, and a woman lounging on a divan. In each case, the audience interpreted the man’s expression according to the image in the second shot, and praised his emotive acting.
This demonstration became the foundation of Soviet montage theory, which was a major influence on world cinema through its proponents’ ideas about editing and the association of images. Among its more notable later adherents was the celebrated British director Alfred Hitchcock. 20 years before Kuleshov identified and demonstrated the effect that bears his name, another British filmmaker had begun experimenting with an early form of montage editing (although that term did not yet exist) within a three-shot structure.
George Albert Smith had corresponded with Georges Méliès in 1897, when he first began incorporating his own versions of the cinematic trick effects that Méliès helped pioneer. The following year, he produced perhaps the first instance of parallel action in a film. Then, in November 1899, he had an idea about how to liven up the already-overdone “phantom ride” genre that would prove to be a leap forward for continuity editing in narrative films.
Smith and his wife, the actress Laura Bayley, performed a scene of a couple stealing a chance to enjoy a moment of intimacy in the sudden darkness of a railway tunnel. Smith then sold the scene to exhibitors with the suggestion that they splice it into their phantom ride films during a moment where the camera enters a tunnel. The result effectively demonstrated how disparate pieces of film footage could be seamlessly edited together in order to produce a coherent narrative.
Smith’s film spawned several imitators who introduced their own innovations and variations of its central premise. But more importantly, it marked a new beginning for film grammar and storytelling in the very year that both Kuleshov and Hitchcock were born, right at the end of the 1800s. 60 years later, Alfred Hitchcock concluded his film North by Northwest with a famous shot of a train entering a tunnel as a visual metaphor for the somewhat more intimate moment being shared offscreen by the couple inside. This likely wasn’t a conscious homage to Smith’s A Kiss in the Tunnel, but it serendipitously demonstrates how each film is part of a larger tapestry of history.
Screening:
The version of this film that is available from the British Film Institute has it edited into View from an Engine Front – Shilla Mill Tunnel, an 1899 phantom ride filmed in England’s South West Peninsula by Cecil Hepworth. They describe it as “a construction of two films as they may have been exhibited,” which suggests that this particular version was created much later, in the absence of any actual examples from the time. Hepworth’s film at first appears to be simply a static shot of a train, which is seen emerging from the tunnel ahead. Once that train has gone by, though, the train the camera is mounted on begins moving and enters the tunnel as well, creating the ideal moment for Smith’s film to interject.
Despite ostensibly being set in a darkened railway car, the scene could still only be filmed in full, direct sunlight, and the couples’ shadows are clearly visible against the backdrop. Then again, there would be no mistaking this set for a real passenger compartment, particularly for a 19th-century audience, intimately familiar with train travel. The set consists of two padded benches in front of a painted sheet, with several bits of luggage scattered around. For a touch of added verisimilitude, the camera is jostled back and forth a bit to simulate the train’s motion.
Bayley, a great comedienne whose performance stands out in several of her films, really carries the scenario. Although it helps that she has some natural chemistry with her husband. She tells the entire story of the film through her expressions. Smith’s expressions are barely visible. Rather, his whole performance is conveyed through body language, such as when he looks up, appears to notice that the train has entered the tunnel, and closes his paper decisively (which catches the woman’s attention).
When the man then reaches across and chucks the woman under the chin, she appears to roll her eyes at him. Tolerant and amused, but not interested, she puts up a hand and returns to her book. He says something to her and she smiles and shakes her head in mock annoyance. Finally, she closes her book (but holds her place with her thumb!) as he leans in for a kiss. As soon as he steps back, she pretends to be embarrassed, hiding her face behind the book and grinning. Then she looks up and shakes her head at him again in feigned disapproval.
Much more receptive now, she embraces him as they kiss and kiss again. She at last lays the book aside completely, but he is so distracted that he sits on his hat. She is caught off-guard by this, showing sympathy and concern, but trying to keep the flirtation going as he knocks the hat back into shape.
At this point, the man seems to sense that the train is nearing the end of the tunnel. He says something quickly to the woman as he snatches up his paper and pretends to be absorbed in it, and she quickly opens her book and does the same. However, she hasn’t quite regained her composure. Watch the way she elaborately turns her head back and forth as though miming the act of reading for the benefit of anyone who might be peeping into the car.
Fregoli is passing an open window when he stops to serenade whoever is inside with his guitar. A soldier arrives to stake a prior claim on the window. Fregoli offers to accompany him, and the two begin to make music together. When Fregoli notices an irate man appear up above, he beckons the soldier to stand directly below. When the bedroom’s annoyed occupant returns with a bucket, the soldier is soaked with water and Fregoli flees, laughing.
Essentials:
Italian entertainer Leopoldo Fregoli charmed and delighted audiences for 30 years as a mimic, impersonator, quick-change artist, conjuror, and (above all) comedian. At the height of his popularity, he traveled with a crew of 23 people, including a milliner, hairdresser, seamstress, and costume designers. His props, which included several hundred costumes and over a thousand wigs, reportedly filled four train cars. He would routinely play a hundred or more characters in a single performance.
His skills as a master of disguise were so widely-known, in fact, that there is a psychiatric delusion named after them. A person with “Fregoli disorder” is someone who believes that several different people are all the same person in disguise. The word fregolismo in Italian has come to refer, not only to the theatrical art of quick-change, but also to frequent, sudden, and opportunistic changes in political position. While Fregoli’s popular stage career clearly left a mark on the culture, it crossed paths only briefly with motion pictures. Still, he left behind a distinctive body of work from those few years.
It has been argued that Fregoli was cinema’s first named star, and this claim (which is dubiously attached to many different performers) deserves some examination. Bodybuilder Eugen Sandow was likely the first person whose celebrity was used to market a film, and he also appeared in motion pictures by multiple filmmakers. And Sandow was just one out of several performers throughout the mid-1890s whose established fame served as a draw for films that featured them. Then again, the performers in these films were appearing as themselves, in much the same way that there were films of President McKinley, Queen Victoria, or Pope Leo XIII. Presumably no one would argue that this latter group were early “film stars.”
Fregoli sometimes appeared in films as himself, performing some element of his stage act, but in other films (as in La Serenata di Fregoli) he is clearly playing a character in a fictional narrative. In some ways this is similar to Georges Méliès, who was also a magician, also filmed elements of his own acts, appeared in most of his own films, and used them as part of his theatrical programs. However, out of 27 known films that Fregoli made around the turn of the century, over half have his name in the title. By contrast, Méliès never included his name in the title of his films, and Fregoli also seems to have achieved a great deal of international fame before Méliès did.
Fregoli’s series of self-titled comedic films, featuring himself in the main role, most resembles the film careers of later stars like Max Linder (who greatly influenced Charlie Chaplin) and Fatty Arbuckle. All of these early comedians, along with other silent stars like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd (who didn’t usually include their names in the titles of their films), played a recognizable persona in film after film. But it was understood by audiences that the characters in these films, who appeared in a variety of contexts and even time periods, who might be married sometimes and other times not, or have different ages and occupations, weren’t all meant to be the same person, despite being played by the same person in a recognizably similar way.
If Leopoldo Fregoli wasn’t the first international film star to pioneer this sort of celebrity recognition in motion pictures, then he at least deserves to be acknowledged as among the first. He is also somewhat unique among other filmmakers of the 19th-century in that the movies seem to have pursued him, rather than the other way around. He lucked into a film career in much the same way that he had lucked into a career as an entertainer to begin with.
In 1887, he left Italy for military service in Africa, and participated in the invasion of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). According to one account, while on leave in Eritrea he organized a group of fellow soldiers to stage a play. However, just before they were set to perform, his entire cast was recalled to the front. Not wanting to disappoint the audience, Fregoli went out and played all the parts himself. He was so successful that (reportedly) the commanding general reassigned him to run the theater and entertain the troops.
After leaving the army, he toured successfully in Italy and other countries, and eventually came to the attention of Alfred Moul, managing director of London’s Alhambra Theatre. Fregoli began performing there in March 1897, and a run that was meant to last a single month was stretched to almost three. This was the same venue where Robert Paul had debuted his motion picture projector one year before, and Paul had continued to show films at the Alhambra in the meantime.
This connection was presumably how Paul came to meet Fregoli, and got him to appear on film for the first time. Fregoli performed his impersonations of various famous composers for Paul’s camera. Paul marketed Fregoli’s Famous Impersonations of Composers to be accompanied by specific musical cues to go with each composer. Unlike Méliès, though, Fregoli doesn’t seem to have developed an immediate interest in making his own films.
That apparently changed when he toured Lyon at the end of 1897, and met Louis Lumière, who was a fan. Where Méliès had tried and failed to buy a cinématographe from the Lumières (he bought his first camera from Robert Paul instead), Louis invited Fregoli to visit the brothers’ factory. Louis also took the opportunity to shoot a few films with Fregoli, including one where he performed a serpentine dance in full costume and wig (see right).
They spent two days showing Fregoli how the cinématographe worked, and then arranged for him to get his own. It was delivered the following summer. Fregoli soon incorporated it into his act and started calling it the “Fregoligraph” (see left). It accompanied him on tour, but his films also sometimes played as part of programs where he wasn’t present. Fregoli was far from the first Italian filmmaker, but he was certainly one of the first to appear, as either an actor or director, before an international audience.
Screening:
La Serenata di Fregoli puts a uniquely Italian spin on the oldest cinematic gag: Someone pulls a prank that causes someone else to get wet, and then the perpetrator is chased by their victim. It’s more sophisticated than the original (with props, scenery, and costumes, as well as dialogue between the characters), but the basic structure is the same. However, it’s easy to imagine that this version of the scenario (an irate sleeper douses a serenader who has come to the wrong window) is a joke that is far older still.
Much like Méliès, Fregoli’s performance is affable and energetic, and careful to bring the audience along with him for every step. Note the way he frequently looks and gestures directly to the camera (which Méliès did not generally do, even when he was performing a stage act on film). Fregoli invites the audience to be in on the joke, telling them “watch this” with a gesture and a wink before setting up the hapless soldier.
What’s particularly notable is how Fregoli (again in contrast with a filmmaker like Méliès) is using a real-world location to film. This is clearly the middle of an actual country lane, but the “house” is a piece of two-dimensional stage scenery set up against the hedge at the side of the road. It’s an excellent use of an existing space. Fregoli has placed the camera so that we can see the main action up close, but he still has plenty of room to run away without exiting the frame. The same shot would have been much more difficult to achieve with either a fake backdrop or a real house, not least because the window is too low to be an actual second-story window, so the camera would have to be further away to get it in-frame.
See also how the ground below the window is already muddy and wet as the scene begins, and there is a bit of splashing evident at the base of the “house.” It’s possible that the shot was rehearsed in advance, though it must not have been with an actual person standing under the bucket. With the soldier there, the entire side of the house ends up getting wet, as well. Perhaps this is a sly bit of foreshadowing, or a nudge to the audience to notice that this isn’t the first time an unlucky serenader has gotten this treatment. The film’s one mystery is the man in the straw hat who suddenly appears alongside the soldier to give chase to Fregoli at the end.
The beautiful princess Sarashina beguiles Koremochi, a passing warrior, with sake and an enchanting dance, and he falls into a bewitched sleep. Hachiman, sacred deity of the samurai, sends a mountain god to Koremochi. He warns the warrior that the princess is actually a demon, and grants him the Kogarasu Maru, a famous, thousand year-old sword. Koremochi battles the transformed Sarashina, who wields a maple branch against him.
Essentials:
Tradition holds that Japanese kabuki theater was invented at the beginning of the 17th century by Izumo no Okuni, a shrine maiden. It was performed exclusively by women for over a quarter of a century, until women were banned from performing (ostensibly due to concerns about excessive eroticism, though there were other class and social factors in play). Kabuki was already too popular to die out, though, and by the mid-1600s, the form was thriving with all-male performers, establishing a tradition that continues today.
Kabuki combines highly-stylized and often exaggerated dramatic performances with traditional dance. The actors cover their faces in makeup, using specific patterns to represent different character types, and wear lavish, elaborate costumes. Kabuki includes three main types of plays: jidaimono (historical plays), sewamono (contemporary, domestic dramas), and shosagoto (dance-dramas).
Originally, although many were incredibly popular celebrities, kabuki actors were also social outcasts, and could generally only marry others from the theatrical world. This led to strong traditions being passed down through generations of acting families. Kabuki actors perform under a stage name (often a whole series of names across their careers), and many of these are passed down from father to son or from mentor to student.
Many of these names have hundreds of years of history and tradition attached to them. They are also frequently associated with a particular style of acting (like aragoto, an exaggerated style, or wagoto, a more naturalistic style) or type of character (such as onnagata, a male who performs female roles, tachiyaku, young male roles who are often the hero, or katakiyaku, the villain role). In the 19th century, two such actors were Ichikawa Danjūrō IX (see left) and Onoe Kikugorō V, the most popular and celebrated performers of their day.
Danjūrō was descended from the first Ichikawa Danjūrō, who had performed under that name beginning in 1675. Born in 1838, Danjūrō IX took his name in 1874, after nearly 30 years as an actor. He lived at a key moment when Japan was rapidly changing from an isolationist, feudal society, to a modern, industrial society. As a representative of over 200 years of theatrical traditions, he is largely credited with helping to preserve the prominence and popularity of kabuki during the Meiji period. His legacy is carried on today by Ichikawa Danjūrō XIII, who took the name in 2022.
Onoe Kikugorō V (see right) began performing under that name in 1868, when he was 24 and already a 20-year veteran of the stage. The first Onoe Kikugorō established the name in 1730. Kikugorō frequently starred in plays by Kawatake Mokuami, the most prolific, and some say the greatest, dramatist in kabuki history. Kikugorō’s legacy also continues today, with Onoe Kikugorō VII, who took the name in 1973.
Momijigari was originally a play written for noh theater, a distinct and much older Japanese form that incorporates masks and follows a rigid set of performing traditions. However, in 1887, Mokuami adapted the story as a shosagoto for the kabuki stage, in which Danjūrō played the demon-princess Sarashina. The Emperor Meiji himself attended a performance, the first time an emperor had ever visited a kabuki theater.
The emperor’s patronage was a triumph for Danjūrō’s efforts to reform and revitalize the art. Mokuami’s adaptation of a work from the more prestigious noh tradition may have reflected a similar spirit. The response to these efforts was somewhat mixed among kabuki audiences. However, performances by Danjūrō and Kikugorō during this time would become models for the future of the form, thanks in part to the arrival of film a decade later.
Emperor Meiji (right) and Empress Shöken (left) are shown attending a performance of Momijigari in this contemporary commemorative print.
Projected films were immediately popular as a brand-new form of entertainment when they first appeared in Japan in 1897. After Lumière technician François-Constant Girel returned to France, Shibata Tsunekichi (see below) shot some films for the Lumières early in 1898, reportedly becoming the first native Japanese filmmaker. In early 1899, he also filmed a series of geisha dances for Komado Koyo, a popular benshi (Japanese narrator of silent films).
Shibata’s experience is likely the reason he was approached, late that year, for a particularly special and sensitive project. Danjūrō was at that time appearing alongside Kikugorō in a revival of the 1887 Momijigari show. As the most celebrated actor of his time, appearing in one of his most celebrated roles, the potential as a subject for film was clear. There was just one problem: Danjūrō wanted nothing to do with the cinema.
Danjūrō’s distaste seems to have gone beyond mere contempt for film as an art form. He apparently referred to it with the pejorative “ship-brought” (i.e., foreign), as well. However, his manager and others managed to convince him of the value of preserving a record of his performance for posterity. He reluctantly agreed, but only on the condition that the film would not be shown while he was still alive. The result, shot by Shibata in November 1899, is the oldest (surviving) Japanese film.
Screening:
Momijigari couldn’t be filmed during an actual performance inside the theater, due to the lack of natural light. Instead, the scenes were shot on a small outdoor stage behind the theater. According to Shibata, it was so windy that several stagehands had to hold the backdrop in place. Afraid Danjūrō might change his mind at any moment and scuttle the whole project, they went ahead anyway and began filming the actor’s dance as the princess Sarashina.
Two kuroko facilitate a modern performance
Unfortunately, partway through Danjūrō’s dance, a sudden gust of wind whisked one of his fans away and off the stage just as he threw it into the air. Danjūrō barely reacts, flipping the other fan and pausing only briefly while the kuroko (the stagehand dressed in black, understood by the audience to be invisible) rushes forward and retrieves it. Because Danjūrō would only allow one take, this moment was preserved for all-time along with the rest of the performance.
What’s interesting is how little the effects of this strong wind are visible otherwise. Note particularly the small tree next to where the kuroko is sitting. It appears completely still until he jumps up to go retrieve the dropped fan, and then again when he returns to sit down. His movements alone seem to be enough to cause that tree to sway visibly, yet it is totally unaffected by any wind. The tree’s smaller branches and leaves don’t seem to so much as stir, even though some of them are above the backdrop and not sheltered from any direction.
Is it possible Shibata came up with this story after the fact, as a way of covering for the great actor’s mistake? After all, the shadows make it clear that Danjūrō is facing into the sun. Could it have just been a slightly miscalculated toss? Looking closely at that moment, it does genuinely appear possible that some exterior force nudged the fan out of his reach. Perhaps the most likely explanation is that the wind was responsible for the dropped fan, but the amount of wind that day was exaggerated in the telling, whether inadvertently or otherwise.
The film’s second scene depicts the Yamagami (mountain god) sent by Hachiman to warn and arm the sleeping Koremochi. Note not only how different the dance is, but also even the types of movements, particularly of the head. They effectively convey the impression that this character is not human. Several of the moves look quite demanding, requiring a great deal of acrobatic and athletic skill. Some could even cause injury if done poorly, such as when he lands on one foot with the other placed topside down against the floor, ankle bent awkwardly, then proceeds to swap positions with each hop.
The scene ends with Koremochi waking up and girding himself for battle, then the film cuts immediately to his faceoff against the demon. Again, although it is obviously very stylized, it is easy to see the sophistication of this combination of dance and fight choreography. The demon begins by tearing a few small branches off of the tree and throwing them at Koremochi. Watch how the kuroko looks for his moment, then darts around the combatants at the first opening to retrieve these branches (presumably to avoid any potential for a hazard).
A replica of the Kogarasu Maru. The original 8th-century blade is in the Japanese Imperial Collection.
The action of the fight is clear and easy to follow, but also exciting. This portion requires tremendous coordination. It isn’t just that the combatants are moving in sync. As they slide past each other, they barely seem to touch, even though their costumes are very bulky. The demon’s hair also drags on the floor, but without even looking, neither of them steps on it. It must be firmly attached, too, given the way the demon swings it at Koremochi near the film’s end.
The film ends with the battle unresolved. In the original play, just as Koremochi seems to have gained the upper hand, the demon immobilizes him with its cursed gaze. However, the divine sword fights on without him and defeats the demon. It would be interesting to see how that effect was accomplished. It may have been as simple as having the kuroko wield the sword. It’s possible to find short excerpts of modern performances of Momijigari online, including part of this scene, but Danjūrō’s manager was right: None of them is a match for this incredible artifact from 19th-century Japan.
After her stepmother leaves her behind, Cendrillon’s fairy godmother appears and magically conjures a coach, attendants, and a beautiful dress so she can attend the royal ball. She cautions Cendrillon to be back by midnight. Cendrillon dances with the prince, but when the clock strikes 12, she is returned to her ragged state in front of everyone. She flees, but the prince retrieves her slipper. Cendrillon is plagued by nightmares of clocks tolling midnight, but the prince arrives with the lost slipper and recognizes her. Cendrillon and the prince are married, and their wedding is followed by a celebration and a dance.
Essentials:
The story of Cinderella needs very little introduction. Very few fairy tales are known as well or as widely. There are versions of the story that are thousands of years old, and they have been told from Europe to Asia. It has been a perennial favorite of audiences for centuries. The story has been adapted on film dozens of times, and perhaps hundreds (if films that reference or were inspired by the story are included). Georges Méliès’s Cendrillon is the first of these many, many film adaptations.
As with many later adaptations, Méliès’s film is based on the 17th-century French version by Charles Perrault, the one best-known to western audiences. His film version was probably most directly inspired by a stage production that had played at Méliès’s own theater (the Théâtre Robert-Houdin) two years earlier, though he also drew from famous illustrations of the story by Gustave Doré. However, Méliès may also have been motivated to tell this particular story at this particular time by a different production entirely. A few months earlier, Jules Massenet’s opera Cendrillon (see right) premiered at the Opéra-Comique and was hugely popular.
There is also a surprising amount of information available about the cast, particularly for such an early film. Cendrillon has a relatively large cast (well over 30, including extras), and film scholars have identified several who appear in major roles. Méliès himself is easy to identify: He plays le gnome de la pendule (“the clock gnome”) and the Swiss guard standing at the church entrance as the wedding procession enters. Jeanne d’Alcy, as the queen (the prince’s mother), is harder to spot.
Other roles, including Cinderella and the Prince, were filled by performers who are mostly known from their other collaborations with Méliès. The Fairy Godmother was played by Bleuette Bernon (see left), who would go on to play key roles in a few of Méliès’s best-known films. She had been a singer at Cabaret de l’Enfer (“the Cabaret of Hell”), a themed establishment where the doormen wore devil costumes and the proprietor dressed as Mephistopheles. It sounds like exactly the kind of place Georges Méliès would have frequented.
At first glance, Cendrillon is full of Méliès’s familiar tricks. There are several substitution splices to effect transformations, appearances, and disappearances. The story is full of whimsical and fantastical elements. Many of the props and sets have a distinctly stagey look. In fact, when the fairy godmother departs at the end of the first scene, she drops down through what is very obviously a stage trapdoor.
All of this is typical of Méliès, but nevertheless Cendrillon is a significant link between his earliest films and the films that he would soon be best known for. It is the first of many films in the féerie (“fairy play”) genre that would be among his most successful and elaborate productions during the following decade. It is also his first multi-scene film, and one of the first multi-scene films ever made.
The first known multi-scene film, Come Along, Do!, was of course released the previous year. While there may have been others in the interim (now lost), Cendrillon presents us with a whole series of scenes that attempt to tell a coherent story. This was one of the first films Méliès made after his multi-scene series L’Affaire Dreyfus. But unlike those films, and previous “series” films like La Vie et la Passion de Jésus-Christ or Rip Van Winkle, these scenes are all edited together into a single film, and were not sold separately as stand-alone products to exhibitors.
Even more significantly, Méliès introduced dissolves to transition between scenes. Each scene fades seamlessly into the next over a couple of seconds. It’s a move so basic and so simple that, to a modern audience, it might pass entirely without notice. However, this is believed to be the first film where that technique was employed.
Certainly Méliès’s contemporaries would have been familiar with the details of the Cinderella story, as most audiences are today. Even so, it’s possible to follow the main action of the film without knowledge of the story, though knowing something about stage traditions (like the final dance number and tableaux) is helpful. Each event follows pretty clearly from the one before: Cendrillon is sad because she has to stay home. Her Fairy Godmother appears and gets her ready to go to the ball, but cautions her to watch the time. She doesn’t, and is exposed, etc.
This stands in contrast with a multi-scene series like L’Affaire Dreyfus. Most of those series not only require some outside context to understand individual scenes, but frequently don’t bother to make strong story connections from one scene to the next. The audience (or an in-theater narrator) is expected to provide all of the necessary context, and it is assumed that some exhibitors won’t be showing all of the scenes, or all in the same order. Cendrillon heralds a new kind of cinematic storytelling, distinct from most of what had come before.
Screening:
Doré’s illustration of the ball from Cinderella
A fragment of the first scene shows that a hand-tinted version of this film once existed. Sadly, it is now almost entirely lost. Only those few seconds, reincorporated into the most recently-restored version, are known to have survived. It is easy to imagine how spectacular some of the later scenes must have looked with color.
What’s most interesting and unique about this version of Cinderella is its focus on clocks as a recurring visual motif. This Cinderella is, as film historian J.B. Kaufman puts it, “haunted by the tyranny of time.” It’s difficult to know now whether this was a Méliès innovation, or was drawn from some other contemporary production. Still, it is notable that this, the very first film version, introduces elements that are so unfamiliar in such an otherwise familiar story, but that nevertheless fit perfectly with a major theme of the story.
Time is the true antagonist of this film. Cendrillon’s stepmother and stepsisters are a bit mean to her, but they are barely developed as characters at all. Time is the adversary that actually torments Cendrillon. This culminates in the film’s most original and visually-stunning sequence: Cendrillon’s nightmare. It does seem clear that the audience is meant to understand that this is a dream sequence. The clock in the room doesn’t move until after Cendrillon lays her head down on the table, and the room returns to normal as the stepsisters shake her awake at the end.
In this dream, the bedroom clock first chases a horrified Cendrillon around the room, and then the clock gnome leaps out of it and begins to hammer on a bell. He rings it exactly 12 times as four dancers emerge, then disappears to be replaced by a fifth dancer in the center. All five hold clocks set to midnight, which they wave in Cendrillon’s face. Then they, too, transform into clocks (still set to midnight) and begin to dance. Turning back into their original form, they unite and transform again into one giant clock. The clock gnome reappears in its center and mocks Cendrillon before she finally wakes up.
Notice that a clock is featured prominently in every scene until the prince arrives with the missing slipper. After that, clocks disappear from the film entirely. Freed from their tyranny, Cendrillon now has all the time in the world . . . which is really just another way of saying “she lived happily ever after.”
Moviegoings 