This is a beautiful early film. It's a Lumière film of the serpentine dance, and the print we've inherited is the most stunning hand-colored film from the early days of motion pictures. Loïe Fuller invented the serpentine dance for the stage, and she was an especially big hit in France and an inspiration to the Art Nouveau movement. It had previously been imitated at least five times in the movies by Annabelle Moore for the Edison Company and once more for the American Mutoscope Company, between 1894 and 1896. Yet, Annabelle was a comparable amateur; the unknown performer of this film seems to have achieved a closer resemblance to Fuller's dance. Some sources have even confused Fuller to be the dancer in this film, although Fuller and Lumière historians assure that she is not.
The cinematographer for this film is unknown, too. The framing of the shot for this film deserves some mention, though. Besides allowing the performance to remain within frame, the angle alerts us that the dance is performed on stage. Compared to the dark, cramped and overused Black Maria setting of most of the Annabelle films, the setting here is a welcome addition.
On the stage, Fuller's twirling swaths of silk would achieve color transformations via lighting effects reflecting upon the fabric. For this film, the Lumière Company adopted the approach of the Annabelle films by hand coloring the film for a similar effect on the black and white celluloid. Nearly every major early film studio hand colored certain films at an additional price. Of the Lumière films, hand-colored prints of "Les Forgerons" (1895), "Partie de cartes' (1895), "Mort de Marat" (1897) and "Exécution de Jeanne d'Arc" (1898) are still available. None are quite this stunning, however. Today, this and the Annabelle films offer us a glimpse of why Fuller and her many imitators were so popular.
