Le cerceau magique

It's a real shame that "The Hoop" by Émile Cohl is so degraded. It's a very good film but the ravages of time on nitrate stock have made much of the film impossible to see clearly. Still, despite this it's a great film to see because it's one of Cohl's best early films. And, it shows a VERY strong influence by the work of Georges Méliès--one of the greatest early French filmmakers.

The film begins with a little girl and an older man in the park. He makes a hoop appear and then repeatedly makes it magically become bigger. This is VERY similar to Georges Méliès' films because it uses stop-motion to make things appear and disappear EXCEPT that it's filmed outdoors--something the other filmmaker just didn't do. Then, the hoop begins having a sort of cartoon show appear within it--but so much of this is degraded. It's a shame, as up until then it was quite captivating and excellent for such an early film.

This very early Emile Cohl short does not survive in particularly good shape, but it is key in his transformation from trick films -- often in collaboration with Segundo de Chomon, one of Gaumont's directors meant to compete with Melies -- into the first regular animation director: a little girl has a friend bend a stick into a hoop, then magically stretch it; she chases it with a stick, and then hangs it on a wall.... and we see animated bits in it, at first origami, and latter drawn items.

Cohl would direct a large number of these for Gaumont and his FANTASMAGORIA is considered seminal, but animation would remain a very expensive and time-consuming operating for another eight years, when Bray would begin to invent and buy patents for some of the basic tools of the industry. In the meantime, Cohl's stuff remains unique.