Chez le photographe

The dating of this film is curious. It appears on the C-series Gaumont catalogue, which consists otherwise of films made by Georges Hatot and Gaston Breteau in 1898. I can see no good reason to suppose that this film was not made by them at the same time.

The actor playing the customer looks to be Henri Vallouy, a Gaumont employee who acted as cameraman for Hatot and Breteau but did also act in and direct films for Gaumont. As a result the film is nowadays often ascribed to Vallouy. However the fact that he appears as an actor does not mean he was necessarily the director

During their time at Gaumont in 1898-99, Hatot and Breteau made some original films but also remade a large number of films that Hatot had previously made for Lumière (1896-1898), including, most importantly The Passion of Christ (in which Breteau played the title role). Of the other Lumière films remade at this time, many were certainly Hatot's own original work, particularly three films from his series cf views of the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian war, The Last Cartridges, Combat sur la voie ferrée and Surprise Attack on a House at Dawn. This series of films was evidently something in which he took particular pride because he would remake the films yet again and add further titles to the series when at Pathé (1900-1905). Several other films in the catalogue are also remakes of his own work.

Hatot was not a particularly scrupulous man (he would much later serve a two-year prison term on account of is association with the notorious crook Victor Stavinsky) but he does seem to have his own sense of propriety and of property where his films were concerned. Great care was taken (quite exceptionally) over the copyrighting of his most important films for Lumière (at whose insistence one does not know) and, while he evidently respected the company's right to the films themselves (he did not attempt to walk off with them), he appears genuinely to have felt that he retained what might be called intellectual rights over their content(a very reasonable view of things in fact).

But what then to say of the remakes that appear in the Gaumont catalogue of the famous Arroseur arrosé, originally shot by Lumière himself in 1895 or of this film which is a remake of Photographe, again originally shot by Lumière himself in 1896. Of course plagiarism of this sort was very common and there may be nothing more to it than that but it seems a little out of line with Hatot's practice (both at Gaumont and later at Pathé) of determinedly remaking his own films.

Much may turn on when precisely Hatot began to work for Lumière. The most likely date is in fact 1896. Lumière had relied in 1985-1896 on his own resources and on those of his ex-magician friend Félicien Trewey to provide the all-important fiction films that were needed. From the very outset Lumière was very aware of the importance of fictional films, very carefully ensured that all showings contained at least one and took a very personal interest in the making of them.

However Lumière was a busy man and took little part in actual film-making after 1896. He had moreover lost his "fiction" man because Trewey had gone as the Lumière concessionaire to London in 1896. So Lumière badly needed a Hatot in 1896 and, as it happens, Hatot (and Breteau) badly needed a job at exactly the same time because the Hippodrome for which they had worked was closed down so that work could begin in preparation for the Paris Exposition of 1900.

Very few of the prints originally shot by Lumière himself in 1895-1896 survive. Virtually all had to be remade because the original was too worn or were remade to give them a more "modern" touch (everything was moving with a startling rapidity in this respect) in 1897. In that year, as we know from the catalogue, there was an absolute flurry of re-shooting of earlier films. The later versions of the Arroseur arrosé (at least three exist), for instance, were not shot in 1895 but in 1897. Lumière himself claimed (in a reply to film-historian Georges Sadoul) that Photographe was a film he himself made but in all probability he was actually referring to an earlier version (which still exists but is uncatalogued) in which the parts of client and photographer were played respectively by Lumière's friend and former employee the photographer Maurice Clément and by his brother Auguste. The catalogued version which dates from early 1897 may well not have been his work at all.

My drift is probably clear. If, as seems perfectly likely, Hatot and Breteau started to work for Lumière at the end of 1896 or very early in 1897, then it may well have been their arrival that spurred he flurry of re-shooting that followed and Hatot may well have been true to his principle (or stretching it only a little) in feeling that L'Arroseur arrosé and Photographe were also in some sense his property.

Alice Guy, the world's first director, did this one about a guy getting his picture taken. It's cast as a comedy as the rube (I don't know the French word for the type) grows fascinated with this amazing technology and causes havoc and destruction.

It's a one-shot set-up with no camera tricks, far less involved than the sort of work that Melies was doing, but its short length makes the gag work. Guy's direction of the exaggerated motions are quite amusing and her mise-en-scene (a French word I do know) is competent and assured. For the amount of time it takes to watch, it works.

That was typical of Alice Guy's work: competent, technically facile and still understandable. It's not something that can be said about all her contemporaries.