User Reviews

At the Club (1899)

*** (out of 4)

Wonderful Absinthe (1899)

** (out of 4)

Two more early films from Alice Guy and the Gaumont Studios. AT THE CLUB features a group of men sitting around a table playing a game when a fight breaks out. WONDERFUL ABSINTHE has a drunk getting bumped from behind when, sure enough, a fight breaks out. The best of these two films is certainly AT THE CLUB as there's an all around innocent feel to it that really comes off as if Guy is having some fun showing what she perceives to be what happens to men at these clubs they go to. On that level the film is pretty funny as nothing much happens but the way the fight breaks out makes for a nice laugh. The second of the two films is pretty bland and I have to wonder if it was a one-shot production because it appears a lot of the action takes place off camera. While watching the film I wondered if this is what Guy wanted or if the actors simply missed their mark and did their thing off the frame.

I have been at some pains in other reviews to indicate Gaumont films of 1898 that are not by Alice Guy but by Georges Hatot and Gaston Breteau whom we now know, thanks to the archival research of Maurice Gianati, to have been also in the employ of Gaumont during that year. I have also tried to emphasise the point that it does the director no service whatsoever to ascribe to her these films which are entirely different in style from her own and on the whole distinctly inferior.

One appreciates the truth of that as soon as one arrives at films that are by Guy. Unlike Hatot and Breteau who, by dint of their theatre experience and their theatre contacts, had a preference for relatively elaborate scenery and theatrical interiors, Guy preferred much more natural outdoor locales and this means that her films have a greater immediacy and a greater animation than those of Hatot and Breteau. This is true even of the two very short films mentioned by the other reviewer, this and La Bonne absinthe.

Hatot and Guy have much in common. They were both youngsters (she was born in 1873 and he in 1876) who started their cinema careers at the same time. Neither was a cinematographer and both were therefore quite clearly "directors", perhaps in their different ways the first really important pioneers in that respect. Of the two, Alice Guy has (deservedly) received a great deal of attention both during her lifetime and since. Georges Hatot, virtually none. Guy was the more skilled director, it is true, and had a far longer and more successful career as a result but Hatot was an important pioneer in his own right in many genres (especially historical views, the forerunners of the epic but also,later at Pathé, early chase films - including quite the best version of the much-copied McCutcheon classic Personal - Dix femmes pour un mari - and the very first comic series featuring André Deed).

No purpose is served in trying to praise one director above another, whether because they are a woman or because they have acquired a certain critical cachet. Much more is learned and much more appreciated by recognising the distinct merits of each and every contributor to the art of the cinema as it emerged and developed.