The heavy-handedness of this teetotaler polemic, "Victims of Drink," or "Alcohol and Its Victims," is done no favors by the early story film aesthetic. In five scenes, a man goes from blissful domesticity to keeling over after removing his straightjacket--Houdini style--in a padded cell. In between, he wanders by a wine merchant, starts drinking and gambling in a bar, and returns to his family now living in an attic only to spaz and pass out on the floor. As severe a case of alcoholism as I've ever seen.
Each scene consists of a single, static long shot. Titles cards describe proceeding action in the tableau style of the day. For early in the development of the story film, the continuity isn't bad and rather ambitious, I suppose, but don't forget that next door to Ferdinand Zecca making clumsy melodramas such as this for Pathé, at about the same time Georges Méliès was making "A Trip to the Moon" (1902). Across the Channel, the likes of G. A. Smith and James Williamson were already altering camera positions and dissecting scenes. Even in 1902, there were masterpieces, and, then, there were films that were, well, like this one.
(From Cinémathèque Française 35mm print)