User Reviews

When a tramp saves a couple from a robbery, they reward him with a large bank note. Alas, because he is clearly a tramp, everyone assumes he is a thief. It is only when he steals another man's decent clothes that they accept him as being able to pay..... and he has left his money in the rags he abandoned.

There seems to be some doubt about the talent behind this piquant comedy. The IMDb shows its director as Louis Feuillade and its date as 1906; the print available on YouTube shows it as Alice Guy and claims it dates from 1907. Because Guy was was the higher-ranking director at Gaumont in this period (indeed, I would argue she was the first movie director), I side with YouTube.

Whichever is correct, it is a telling commentary on the societal norms of the period. It is not enough to have money; you have to look like it. It's still true.

Entertaining little tale of a tramp's struggle to spend his reward after saving a wealthy man and his companion from a mugging. Goes on a little too long, though - and should have ended with the tramp's arrest in the restaurant. It's the kind of story Chaplin could have worked wonders with...

"Siding with youtube" with regard to this film is a rather contradictory matter. If the film is 1907, it is most unlikely to be by Guy who married and left the company very near the beginning of the year (4 March) and it is also rather pointless supporting something without any kind of evidence.

For the date of the film, the only indication we have to go by is its poisition in the 1908 Gaumont catalogue. This has been reproduced as an appendix to Alison Macmahon's biogrpahy of Alice Guy and is fairly readily available. The catalogue appears to be very straighforwardly chronoloigical so it is not too difficult.to date items - at least approximately.

This group of entries fo instance clearly date from Christmas 1906: The annotations are mine

1556 Le Noël du petit Savoyard. 146m. Evidently Christmas 1906. unknown

1557 Le Noël de M. le Curé. 128m. Evidently Christmas 1906. Unknown but very probably Guy who had a taste for "miracle" films

1558 Noël de la fille perdue. 142m. screenplay by Feuillade directed by Bosetti. (attribution by MacMahon)

1559 Les Souliers de Bal. 132m. unknown

1560 Le Noël du pauvre hère. 60m. evidently Christmas 1906.unknown

1561 Concours de fumeurs. 28m. unknown

1562 Le Pendu. one of the films made both by Gaumont and by Pathé in friendly rivalry in 1906. Probably screenplay by Feuillade, directed by Guy It is based on a song and there is also a possible tie in with the Phonoscenes.

1563 Padoubny et Aimable de la Calmette. 100m. unknown This is actually a film of a wrestling match and the date is known to have been November-December 1906.

1565 A la recherche d'une appartement. 120m. O'Mers. Known to be by Guy who mentions it in her autobiography.

1566 Ma bonne est une perle. 152m. unknown

1568 Les Lunettes du Père Noël. evidently Christmas 1906 unknown

The director is unknown in most cases. By late 1906 Alice Guy had very little time for such comic shorts. She made over a hundred phonoscenes (talkies) during the year and also spent some time in teh South of France with Feuillade and Herbert Blaché where she filmed a bullfight at Nîmes and sadly failed to make a film version of Mistral's novel Mireille because the film did not come out. This was probably a botch by Blaché but Guy, already in love, did not blame him for it. She got engaged to be marrried on Christmas day and was thereafter also busy with the arrangemets for the marriage and arrangements to leave the country as she decided to accompany Blaché to the US.

She ws therefore very reliant on her three assistants. Feuillade, as well as being the scriptwriter for the films, aso started directing in 1906 aa did Étienne Arnaud and Roméo Bosetti. So films during this transitional period are just as likely to be directed by any one of these three.

Guy did however find time to direct at least two films in early 1907: . 1570 La Vérité sur l'Homme-Singe. 160m. unknown

1571 La Fugitive. 150m. unknown

1572 Casimir fait la bombe. 145m. Casimir was later a Bosetti character. possibly directed by Bosetti

1573 Les Resultats du Feminisme. 140m. Certainly Guy. She remade the film much later in the US.

1574 L'Assassin. 141m. This is probably by Guy. It is based on a famous Grand guignol play and she talks in her biography of making several such films.

1576 Le Toboggan Moderne. 82m. unknown

1579 Histoire d'un vieil habit. 151m. unknown

1580 Le Docteur Coupe-Toujours. Comique. 118m. unknown

This part of the catalogue presumably dates from January-February 1907. Since Guy and Blaché got married on 4 March and she resigned immediately afterwards, these are presumably the last films she made for Gaumont.

These films in the catalogue would appear to date from March 1907 (two of them are known to have been performed in London in April 1907)

1581 La Dame de Pezenas. 142m. Almost certainly by Feuillade or Arnaud who both came from this region in France. This is one of rare films for which a performance is known. It was shown in London in April 1907.

1582 Il Pleut, Bergère.... Comique. 82m. unknown

1583 L'Enfant bien gardée. 146m. unknown

1584. La Ceinture Électrique. 200m. directed by Étienne Arnaud (grimh). We know that this film was shown in London in April 1907. Discussions of the film, which was something of a cause célèbre and surprise success, suggest it was made after Guy had left. She does not mention it.

1586 Le Bilboquet homeopathqiue. Comique. 120m. unknown

1587 Course à la saucisse. 93m. unknown

These films are therefore April-May 1907. All ascriptions (apart from that of the O'Mers film which is by me) are by Guy's biographer Alison Macmahon.

1616 Le Billet de banque. 235m.

1617 Déménagement à la cloche de bois. 92m. O'Mers. Known to be by Guy who mentions it. This is presumably a film made earlier; it is part of a whole series made in 1906 with the acrobats, the O'Mers .

1618 Le Mannequin est sans pitié. 140m.

1619 Le Cul-de-Jatte emballé. 105m. screenplay by Feuillade, directed by Roméo Bosetti.

1620 Histoire d'une mari et d'une chapeau. 114m.

1621 La Puce. 81m.

1626 Un Facteur trop ferré. 165m. screenplay by Feuillade, directed by Roméo Bosetti.

1627 Belle-Maman n'ira plus à la fête. 170m. screenplay by Feuillade, directed by Roméo Bosetti.

So the evidence iis relatively clear as regards this film. It was probably made in April-May 1907, over a month after Guy had left Gaumont. It is almost certainly written by Louis Feuillade, who was in any case the scriptwriter for virtually all films 1906-1907, but could have been directed by any one of three people - Feuillade himself, Roméo Bosetti or Étinene Arnaud.

While this Gaumont comedy, "Le Billet de banque" (literally translated as "The Banknote") has in the past been attributed to Alice Guy, as on the French DVD compilation of Gaumont films, the consensus now seems to be that someone else directed it--perhaps Louis Feuillade. Tellingly, it was the only film formerly attributed to Guy to be dropped for the Kino region 1 DVD release of the Gaumont collection. Regardless, the nine-scene comedy follows a tramp (who's humorous looking, I suppose, but hardly Chaplin-esque). He rescues a wealthy couple from robbers, and they reward him with the banknote. The tramp, then, faces some discrimination, which is treated in a light manner, as he tries to spend the money. Ironically, he resorts to stealing another man's clothes--one assumes so that he may spend his money without trouble. There's a final gag, and that's about it. I didn't find it funny, but it's, at least, not annoying, and the film has a decent pacing for its age and despite consisting entirely of static long shots; plus, it's short despite being relatively intricate for a narrative from 1907 (yeah, some have been messing up the year of the film, too, which is also a bit fuzzy). In this case, the actors' gesticulations and comedic coding helped move the film along, compensating somewhat for the far-away perspectives, for a pleasant enough experience.