Oh good! You found us.
We're an on-demand movie theater where you can discover hand-picked films from festivals and collections around
the world. We make it easy for you to find films you'll love, no matter what your interests are.
Alice Guy-Blanché frames the making of a “phonoscène” (a forerunner to sound film) as a kind of Russian nesting doll, with a well-lit scene taking place within the darkened activity of its mechanical reproduction. The camera stays in the shadows, slowly panning as the crew readies itself to film a courtly dance against a flat backdrop that loses all verisimilitude from Guy-Blanché’s angle. Interestingly, women operate the phonograph while men duck under the camera’s dark cloth. Anticipating structuralist and verité tactics, Guy-Blanché’s lucid short is an early instance of someone pulling back the curtain on cinema.
GENRES
Related Films
-
Avenue de l'Opera
You aren't imaging things. This short, filmed on the aforementioned Avenue de l'Opera in Paris, is backward as intended. As a bit of excessive cleverness, the music (a recent addition) is scored (or, rather, recorded) back-to-front as well. If you'd ever wondered what things were like in the most famous...Start your free trial to watch
Reviews
(see the best reviews)Join the conversation. Log in or subscribe to write a review!
Extremely rare behind-the-scenes footage of early innovations in motion pictures. Thanks to Fandor and others for highlighting the often ignored contributions of Alice Guy to early film development.
