French postcard by Croissant, Paris, no. 3666. Photo: Film Pathé. Publicity still for Peau d'âne (Albert Capellani, 1908). Caption: The princess wears a donkey skin. The early Pathé production Peau d'ane / Donkey Skin (Albert Capellani, 1908) was based on a story by Charles Perrault (1697). The actors are unknown.
French postcard by Croissant, Paris, no. 3667. Photo: Film Pathé. Scene from Le Chat botté / Puss in Boots (Albert Capellani, 1908), based on the fairytale by Charles Perrault (1697). Caption: Long live the Marquis of Carabas!
During the 1900s, the French company Pathé Frères was famous for its coloured-in adaptations from fairytales, mainly from the French writer Charles Perrault: Le chat botté / Puss in Boots, La belle au bois dormant / Sleeping Beauty, Le petit poucet / Tom Thumb, Barbe-bleue / Bluebird, Cendrillon / Cinderella, Le petit chaperon rouge / Little Red Riding Hood, Riquet a la Houppe, and Peau d'âne / Donkey Skin. From some tales, even multiple versions were made, such as La belle au bois dormant in 1902 and 1908, Le chat botté in 1903 and 1908, Peau d'âne in 1904 and 1908. Georges Méliès had already started these fairytale films in France before 1900 with Cendrillon (1899), while from 1910, Gaumont would also film a few.
French still by Film d'Art. Julia Bartet as Penelope in Le Retour d'Ulysse / The Return of Ulysses (Charles Le Bargy, André Calmettes, 1908). In this film, Paul Mounet played Ulysses and Albert Lambert Antinous.
French postcard by PA, no. 227. Photo: Film d'Art. The card says Albert Lambert in the play 'Vie de Jésus', but this card refers to a film instead. In 1908, Albert Lambert played Jesus in the early French film Le baiser de Judas / The Judas Kiss (André Calmettes, Armand Bour, 1908), with Jean Mounet-Sully as Judas, and scripted by Henri Lavedan.
Ivo's Five Best Films of 1908
5. 'Tonfilmoperette' by Deutsche Bioscop a.o.
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin, no. 972. Photo: Atelier Badekow, Berlin.
Between 1907 and 1911, German tenor Albert Kutzner performed in five very early sound shorts, so-called 'Tonfilmoperette', made by the companies Deutsche Bioscop, Messter and others, e.g. Die lustige Witwe (Viktor Léon, Leo Stein, 1907) and Boccaccio (1908). Kutzner also directed Henny Porten and her sister Rosa in Apachentanz (Messter, 1906), and he directed two early sound films: a scene from the operetta Der Vogelhändler (1908) and Liebes Mannchen, folge Mir (1910).
4. Løvejagten / Lion Hunt (Viggo Larsen, 1908)
German postcard by Verlag Herm. Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 3198.
In the ten-minute short Løvejagten / Lion Hunt (1907), two big game hunters (Viggo Larsen and Knud Lumbye) are on safari in the jungle with their African guide. They observe zebras, ostriches, and a hippopotamus and catch a small monkey for a pet. During the night, they are awakened by a lion that kills a small goat and then the hunters' horse. The hunters shoot the lion as it stands by the water on a beach. They discover another lion and shoot it also. The lions are gutted and skinned. The happy hunters sit and smoke cigarettes afterwards.
Viggo Larsen had filmed the lion hunt at the little Danish island of Elleore in the Roskilde fjord (decorated with palm fronds and artificial plants to simulate a tropical savanna) and in the Copenhagen Zoo. The actual shooting of two captive lions, which Larsen had bought from the Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg, caused an enormous public protest in Denmark, and the film was banned. However, the hitherto unusual and attractive use of exotic animals and the publicity from the protests created success in Sweden. The following year, after the charges of animal cruelty were dropped and the Danish ban was rescinded, the film had its premiere in Denmark. Nordisk eventually sold 259 prints of Løvejagten, which earned the company an enormous profit. It ushered in the 'golden age' of Danish cinema when Nordisk Film became the most productive film company in Europe. A sequel to the film, Bear Hunting in Russia, was shot in 1909 and was also a profitable film, eventually selling 118 prints.
3. The Adventures of Dollie (D.W. Griffith, 1908)
Swedish postcard by Förlag Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 922. A rare portrait of the famous American film director D.W. Griffith.
In 1897, David Wark Griffith set out to pursue a career both acting and writing for the theatre, but for the most part, he was unsuccessful. Reluctantly, he agreed to work for the new motion picture medium for Edwin S. Porter at the Edison Company. He tried to sell a story to Edison, but they hired him as an actor instead. Griffith was eventually offered a job at the financially struggling American Mutoscope & Biograph Co. In 1908, Biograph hired him as a first-time director when the chief director fell ill. His directorial debut was The Adventures of Dollie (1908). He stayed and directed over four hundred and fifty short films.
2. Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei / The Last Days of Pompeii (Arturo Ambrosio, Luigi Maggi, 1908)
Italian postcard. Publicity for the photographic studio and souvenir shop of Giorgio Sommer in Naples, founded in 1857. It not only offered all kinds of photographic materials, including lantern slides, but also marble, silver, ceramic and bronze objects after originals of Roman and Pompeian Antiquity. Sommer could even offer to install electric light in statues and old lamps, which indicates that this card must be from the 1890s earliest.
The Ambrosio film company was founded in 1906 in Turin by Arturo Ambrosio and Alfredo Gandolfi, first as ‘Società Ambrosio & C.’, and in 1907 turned into the public corporation ‘Società Anonima Ambrosio, Torino’. From 1908, when it opened its new studio complex, until 1912, it flooded the world with its shorts. Ambrosio established his reputation worldwide and that of Italian cinema with the historical dramas Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei / The Last Days of Pompei (Arturo Ambrosio, Luigi Maggi, 1908) and Nerone / Nero (Arturo Ambrosio, Luigi Maggi, 1909), both with Luigi Maggi and Lydia Roberti. From 1911 on, Ambrosio produced feature-length films, starting with L’ultimo dei Frontignac / The Last of the Frontignacs (Mario Caserini, 1911) with Alberto Capozzi. In 1912 and 1913, Ambrosio managed to release around 200 films per year and shared with the Roman company Cines the primacy of Italian cinema on the international market.
1. L'assassinat du duc de Guise / The Assassination of the Duke de Guise (André Calmettes, Charles Le Bargy, 1908)
French minicard (collector card) in the Collection Félix Potin, series 1. Photo: Boyer, Paris. Charles Le Bargy.
Charles Le Bargy (1858-1936) was already a famous stage actor in his time, performing at the Comédie-Française, when he debuted in film as the perfidious King Henry III in the historical film L'assassinat du duc de Guise / The Assassination of the Duke de Guise (André Calmettes, Charles Le Bargy, 1908). Remarkable was that Le Bargy, in contrast to the wildly gesticulating actors in the films by, e.g. George Méliès, focused on facial expression and kept the rest rather restrained.
French collector card in the Félix Potin series 2 (1908). Photo: Henri Manuel. Caption: Calmettes (André). Artist.
L'assassinat du duc de Guise / The Assassination of the Duke de Guise (André Calmettes, Charles Le Bargy, 1908) was scripted by Henri Lavédan and starred Albert Lambert as the proud Duke de Guise, Charles Le Bargy as the perfidious King Henry III, and Gabrielle Robinne as Guise's mistress who, in vain, warns him of danger at the royal palace. The murder scene was inspired by a famous painting (1834) by Paul Delaroche, which had already resulted in a so-called 'Living Picture' in 1897 by the Lumière Frères. In 1908, to cover the noise of the spectators, André Calmettes had the great idea of asking a newly written music accompaniment for L'Assassinat du Duc de Guise. Thus, the first composer to compose a film score was Camille Saint-Saëns. The music was most often played "live" by a pianist in the auditorium during the projection.
French postcard by Union postale universelle. Early 20th-century reproduction of Paul Delaroche's painting 'L'Assassinat du Duc de Guise' (1834), Musée Condé, Chantilly. Quoted in the French silent film L'assassinat du duc de Guise / The Assassination of the Duke de Guise (André Calmettes, Charles Le Bargy, 1908).
And check out The 5 Best Films of Every Year Ever. Recommended!
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