1896 – La Fée aux Choux / The Cabbage Fairy

(Note: Due to the 1896 version being lost media, the video here is a remake by Alice Guy from 1900. It is often incorrectly cited as the 1896 original.)

Alice Guy was born in Paris on July 1, 1874, and began her career as a secretary for inventor and industrialist Léon Gaumont in 1894. She directed La Fée aux Choux as a means of demonstrating the possibilities of the camera manufactured by Gaumont, in the process not only producing quite possibly the first fantasy film but becoming the first female film director!

The film was based on a French children’s tale that boys are born in cabbages and girls in roses (a cabbage supposedly resembling a baby’s head). It was quite long for its time, clocking at 1 minute! Guy was soon promoted to the company’s head of motion picture production and directed most of their films until 1905. She not only experimented with cinematic techniques (running film backward, double exposure, etc.) but also used Gaumont’s Chronophone to produce around 100 “sound” films between 1906 and 1907.

Over time, a lot of her accomplishments were forgotten or attributed to her male colleagues. Today only a few of films she produced remain.

Bibliography

IMDb contributors (n.d.). ‘La fée aux choux (1896)’, IMDb. Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0223341/ [Accessed: 22 December 2021].

Noble P. et al. (2013). ‘Languages of love: 10 unusual terms of endearment’, BBC News, 30 May. Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22699938 [Accessed: 22 December 2021].

popegrutch (2014). ‘Cabbage Fairy (1896)’, Century Film Project, 28 May. Available at: https://centuryfilmproject.org/2014/05/28/cabbage-fairy-1896/ [Accessed: 22 December 2021].

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica (2021). ‘Alice Guy-Blanché’. Encyclopædia Britannica, 27 June. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alice-Guy-Blache [Accessed: 22 December 2021].

1896 – L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat / Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat

Directed by: Auguste Lumière, Louis Lumière

Two versions of the film exist, both marked as Lumiere #653. They are differentiated by two distinguishing features: in one, a man disembarks the train, takes a couple of steps towards the camera, seems to notice it and then walks backwards until he is outside of the frame; in the other, two women holding hands with little girls run alongside the train. The placement of the camera remains the same, with the main emphasis on the train. The angle chosen produces a dramatic effect as the train gradually increases in size and finally moves past the audience’s imagined left. It is possible the camera was intentionally left on after the train had stopped to provide sufficient time for relief after the climactic arrival.

A popular cinema legend claims that during screenings of the film, some audience members panicked and ran from their seats believing they were about to be run over by the approaching train. There are no confirmed reports of this and the story is most likely a publicity stunt or an exaggerated description of emotions taken literally. Regardless, it illustrates a very real concept regarding the medium’s ability to elicit an emotional response from audiences, despite being illusory or even presenting outright fiction. We laugh, we cry, and we get frightened by make-believe due to our immersion in stories and suspension of disbelief.

Bibliography

Grundhauser, E. (2016). ‘Did a Silent Film About a Train Really Cause Audiences to Stampede?’, Atlas Obscura, 3 November. Available at: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/did-a-silent-film-about-a-train-really-cause-audiences-to-stampede [Accessed: 18 December 2021].

IMDb contributors (n.d.). ‘The Arrival of a Train (1896)’, IMDb. Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000012/ [Accessed: 18 December 2021].

Vorontzov, D. (2011). ‘L’arrivée d’un train en gare de la Ciotat, 1895’. Cinemaven, 16 March. Available at: http://cinemaven.org/larrivee-dun-train-en-gare-de-la-ciotat/ [Accessed: 22 September 2017].