A Film Canon

 

 

The first great period of Pathé Frères production reflects the rise of 'Blue Films', erotic spectacles that prioritise the act of voyeurism over its object. This is particularly clear in Peeping Tom (1901), which presents a series of increasingly titillating keyholes, as well as History Of A Crime (1901), in which a lavish dream sequence is staged in a cut-away box behind the action proper. More spectacularly, eroticism is deflected into exoticism in a number of Arabian Nights dramas, most notably Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves (1902), directed by Ferdinand Zecca, and Aladin And His Wonder Lamp (1906), directed by Albert Capellani, both of which display exquisite hand-tinting. Whereas Méliès opts for a generalised palette, the Pathé Frères studios prefer discrete, sharply defined patches of colour, making the highly detailed, differentiated Arabian costumes their perfect canvas. Even when the tinting shifts in the direction of some more amorphous entity, it retains this precision, making clouds of smoke seem more like explosions of ground pigment, and paving the way for the more rigorous possibilities of Magic Bricks' (1908) stencil-colouring.