Director: Louis Feuillade
Year: 1913
Runtime: 0:09
Source: Youtube
This one's a trifle, but it has charm. A tiny short with no dialogue, it follows the young boy Bout-de-Zan as he steals a small elephant from the circus, and then gets into a few harmless, slapstick-filled mishaps with it. It's too short for any coherent plot or resolution, and I suppose that's not the point anyway. The elephant's cute, and it's a charming and harmless bit of children's entertainment, but on a personal note, it's hard to overcome the melancholy I feel when looking at circus animals.
There's not much else to report here, but a tiny bit of research uncovers that this was a part of a series of Feuillade shorts starring the young urchin Bout-de-Zan. (Although his means are unclear: he looks like Chaplin's Tramp, but it does appear that he lives in a nice home with patient, well-to-do parents.) The Bout-de-Zan series succeeds an earlier series starring a similar character Bébé Apache. These serials combined contains a stunning 150 shorts directed by Feuillade in five years. I have to recognize that film has a long history predating the turn of the century, and that by the time the list begins, this was a booming international industry with many different audiences being served. Even 1000 films is only enough to get an incomplete story of that industry.
Year: 1913
Runtime: 0:09
Source: Youtube
This one's a trifle, but it has charm. A tiny short with no dialogue, it follows the young boy Bout-de-Zan as he steals a small elephant from the circus, and then gets into a few harmless, slapstick-filled mishaps with it. It's too short for any coherent plot or resolution, and I suppose that's not the point anyway. The elephant's cute, and it's a charming and harmless bit of children's entertainment, but on a personal note, it's hard to overcome the melancholy I feel when looking at circus animals.
There's not much else to report here, but a tiny bit of research uncovers that this was a part of a series of Feuillade shorts starring the young urchin Bout-de-Zan. (Although his means are unclear: he looks like Chaplin's Tramp, but it does appear that he lives in a nice home with patient, well-to-do parents.) The Bout-de-Zan series succeeds an earlier series starring a similar character Bébé Apache. These serials combined contains a stunning 150 shorts directed by Feuillade in five years. I have to recognize that film has a long history predating the turn of the century, and that by the time the list begins, this was a booming international industry with many different audiences being served. Even 1000 films is only enough to get an incomplete story of that industry.
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