An Introduction
"This is just like television, only you can see much further."
Hal Ashby's Being There (1979)
Points
for Reflection
Alice Guy's La Fée aux Choux, or The Fairy of the Cabbages (1900), 55 sec.
- Well before Anne Geddes photographed kids and cabbages, Alice Guy created La Fée au Choux (1896, 1900, 1902). Guy set out to make the first narrative film, to create more than a demonstration reel merely showing a train or boat in motion. Can you identify some kind of story in this short vignette?
- How does first watching this without music, with the addition of Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies" (1892) and then with the very anachronistic "Let Go" (1969) by the Sandpipers alter your understanding of what you're watching?
- This short film was apparently made at least three times in 1896, 1900, and 1902. In the original version, a newlywed asks his bride if she would like a baby, and she timidly agrees. The husband searches a farmer’s field and finds a cardboard baby which is soon supplanted by an actual, cooing baby discovered by the wife. The extant version obviously involves a fairy instead of two newlyweds, dramatically changing the short film's visual cues. Do you discern any thematic elements of the original film I've described that made have their way into the later version you just watched?
- As with a number of early short films, like Robert W. Paul’s Come Along, Do! (1898), Smith’s short tale about a guy with a telescope has a prurient quality to it—capturing the heterosexual man’s preoccupation with female sexuality. Does the consequence of this particular man’s voyeurism seem appropriate given the infraction?
- What kind of visual effect does Smith employ to capture this close-up shot of a female bicyclist’s boot being laced?
- Does George Albert Smith’s The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899) provide a proper, thematic foil to As Seen Through a Telescope?
- Some have claimed that this short film contains the very first reverse-angle cut (commonly used today in shot-reverse shot sequences) in which the editor followed one shot with another taken from an angle 180 degrees opposite the first. Can you find this moment?
- This short flick dramatizes some of the violence characterizing the Boxer Rebellion (18 Oct. 1899 - 7 Sept. 1901) in which some members of the Yihéquán (Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists) spread violence throughout much of eastern China during the close of the Qing dynasty by destroying the property of Chinese Christians and Christian missionaries. The conflict eventually escalated, with Allied forces from Germany, Japan, Russia, Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Austria-Hungary arriving to oppose the Boxers, concluding with the Boxer Protocol of 1901 which executed many officials known to have supported the Boxers. How does Williamson’s film characterize the Boxers and their adversaries? Does one group appear more righteous, or courageous, than the other? Does violence degrade both sides? Consider costume, props, and the staging of action.
La Fée aux Choux (1900)
Alice Guy
Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu
