Le cochon danseur

This early 20th century silent short from France was the first item on disc 2 of the "Saved from the Flames" DVD collection. It has someone in a giant pig costume being humiliated by a beautiful girl dancer he has a crush on as she strips his clothes and makes him dance both naked (so to speak) and with a dress on. Oddly, this is when the pig enjoys himself to the point of sticking his tongue out and moving his eyes! I found this pretty amusing if not hilarious and, at 4 minutes, just about the right length. I do wonder if this was meant for children especially with the stripping and the female dancer moving her skirt up and down like the famous Can-Can. Still, The Dancing Pig (the English title on the disc) is worth a look.

The Dancing Pig is four minutes of pure nightmare fuel from the early days of cinema, the film featuring an oversized anthropomorphic porker dancing with a pretty woman. The pig, resplendent in top hat and dinner jacket, starts off by trying to woo the young lady; unsuccessful, he goes for a quick grope instead, so the woman strips him. The pair then dance together for a while, the pig stopping momentarily to pop on a frock. The pig starts to waggle its tongue and roll its eyes but that doesn't scare the woman like it would me - she just carries on a-prancing.

The film ends with a close of the pig's face which will haunt your dreams, the creepy swine flapping its ears while rolling its eyes upwards and lolling its tongue around a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.

9/10. I just love strange old films like this (apparently, the dancing pig was a popular music hall routine back in the day. Nowadays, it just seems really freaky).

Many people seem to find this old, French short to be very creepy, but I tend to disagree. I found it to be charmingly unique and humorous; it's clearly a film made to produce laughter and joy rather than fear. Depending on how you look at it, the pig suit in the film can be seen as either wacky and funny or haunting and disturbing. Either way, this short must come across as interesting to almost anyone in one way or another.

Essentially, all this film consists of is a brief vaudevillian performance featuring a man in a weird, silly pig costume engaging in outrageous slapstick with a well dressed and mischievous woman. It's quite surreal and can be interpreted as off putting by some, but I found it to be very amusing and enjoyable to watch. It got a few genuine laughs out of me and, overall, left me with a nice, warm grin across my face.

A lovely short film, reminding the flavor of vaudevil, fragment of a lost time , one the little love stories beginning as desire to conquest the beautiful lady, becoming manipulated by her,representing mixture of humor- not so soft- and nostalgia , a seductive story about a pig as part of a kind of parable and a decided woman using it in not the most delicate proposition. Short - pure gem.

This early 20th-century film delivers several genuine "wow" moments. The first comes just seconds in, when an oversized, strangely anthropomorphized swine makes its entrance: its top hat does a full 360-degree flip before landing, and soon after, it sticks unnaturally to the side of the swine's head-something we've only seen replicated by Simon Adebisi's hat in the prison drama Oz nearly a century later. There's a moment later in the film that reveals a bit too much of the top of the pig's head, offering clues as to how they pulled these tricks off.

The second and third "wow" moments occur mid-film and again at the end, the latter featuring close-ups that highlight just how much effort must have gone into constructing the pig's head. The range of bizarre expressions the swine pulls off is both mind-boggling and a little creepy. Still, I have to appreciate the somewhat realistic look of the swine-it's certainly not a pig out of a Disney story.

This is a vaudeville-style film, where the scenes aren't always strongly connected. Much of it consists of period stage comedy, filled with constant motion and wild dancing-something that might feel tedious to modern viewers. It's not a style we tend to prefer these days, so it's difficult to praise or criticize whether the performers were especially skilled, or how audiences at the time felt about it.

I watched both the original black-and-white version and an AI-enhanced, colorized version with adjusted frame rates. Unsurprisingly, the original is creepier and more entertaining due to the unnatural speed and raw charm, but the enhanced version offers a clearer sense of what the performers were actually doing-and enduring-on set.

All in all, a fascinating viewing experience.