The First Animated Film Is Beautiful
Note: This is the first in a series of historical/critical essays examining the best in film from each year. Essentially, I am watching films from the beginning of cinematic history that interest me and/or hold some critical or cultural impact. My personal, living list of favorites is being created at Mubi, which showcases five films per year. This premise begins with consideration of the oldest surviving film, ROUNDHAY GARDEN SCENE (1888); however, films made from 1888–1899 are considered as one entry/year. Therefore, I have selected only five films from those 12 years. From 1900 on, each year features five films independently. All this being explained, what follows is an examination of my favorite 1888–1899 film, PAUVRE PIERROT (1892), directed by Charles-Émile Reynaud.
PAUVRE PIERROT is the oldest surviving animated film, and an impressively long one at that. By 1892, films were seconds, maybe a minute or two, long. The Lumière brothers had yet to create their Cinématographe camera. Thomas Edison (but really, his assistant William Kennedy Dickson) had just created his kinetoscope and was filming bite-sized (I’m talking few seconds, tops) “actualities” in 1891. These were films showing such boring events as Dickson passing his hat from one hand to another (in DICKSON GREETING) and, somewhat more impressively, men boxing in the aptly titled MEN BOXING. Louis Le Prince, probably the actual father of film, had only just made MAN WALKING AROUND A CORNER (the oldest known film) and ROUNDHAY GARDEN SCENE (the oldest surviving film) a few years earlier, and all that it constituted was a few seconds of his family walking around. The point is, all the technological pioneers of early film, the ones following in the wake of George Eastman’s photography innovations, were being just that: technological pioneers.
These were important men and important moments, but they were furthering technology that had been seen as a novelty over half a century earlier. “Magic lanterns” and illusion toys had been playing around with the idea of projected images for some time, and the early film pioneers were taking it a step further: they were making those pictures move for real. But the pictures they decided to show are not necessarily captivating today, beyond their historical significance. And this is coming from someone who thinks the Edison MONKEYSHINE tests are oddly beautiful. It almost made it onto the 1888–1899 top five.
What Reynaud was doing wasn’t necessarily innovative, although even as someone invested in hyper-realistic films and video games nearly 115 years later, I’m really impressed by what PAUVRE PIERROT does. The concept of moving pictures had been established by the time it had been shown, but the cut-out style and jerky movements nevertheless communicates the otherworldly feel I often get from early films. The handpainted colors of the restored version of the film are beautiful, and as I mentioned, the originally fifteen minute movie (four minutes remain) was incredibly lengthy for 1892. Finally, PAUVRE PIERROT’s greatest contribution to film isn’t necessarily technical: it established fiction and a narrative. It was crafted, not experimentally made. It was the earliest example of film as art.
But what is the film even about? Well, as near as I can tell, a clown comes calling for a girl and gets scared away by a tougher, sword (or stick) wielding caller (and as I learned later, this is the typical story of the sad, buffoonish clown Pierrot, his love Columbine, and the much more suave Harlequin). The story behind PAUVRE PIERROT, however, is much more interesting. It’s the story of Charles-Émile Reynaud.
Even though I poo-pooed the technological pioneers earlier (and only in comparison to PAUVRE PIERROT), Reynaud himself was one of them. He invented the Praxinoscope in 1877, the successor to the zoetrope. Basically, a wheel of mirrors would circle around rapidly moving images, making the panels they were on look relatively stationary and giving the images themselves the simulation of motion. It was animation. And like I said, PAUVRE PIERROT was nothing new. Reynaud had come up with his improved zoetrope 15 years earlier, and made a project-able version in 1888.
What was new was what he decided to do with this technology. On October 28, 1892, he launched his Théâtre Optique exhibition at the Musée Grévin in Paris with his Pantomimes Luminueses; his animated films. They included PAUVRE PIERROT, LE CLOWN ET SES CHIENS, and UN BON BOCK. It was a big success, for a while, and preceded the generally accepted first public film performance, from the Lumière brothers, by three years. But eventually, those pesky brothers would end Reynaud’s pretty short-lived success.
Even though he added new films and almost certainly stressed out about improving his shows, the general populace had seen enough of moving drawings. They had seen them for years. They wanted to see moving real things, and the Lumière brothers and every other up-and-coming filmmaker could give them that. The Théâtre Optique show closed in 1900, and by the 1910s, Reynaud was so distraught that he threw most of his films, drawings, and unique, one-of-a-kind inventions in the Seine river. He died essentially penniless in a hospice in 1918, at age 73.
Ironically, it’s Reynaud’s work that I think has held up the best from this era. Well, the few films and drawings that are left. PAUVRE PIERROT is one of those few surviving Reynaud films, and it’s certainly his best. It demonstrated the artistry, novelty, and humor that films could carry, and at such an early point in the history of the art form, when nearly no one else was doing it. It’s a special film, and you should watch it.
