• About

doubtfulsea

~ adventure romance fantasy

doubtfulsea

Tag Archives: Georges Melies

Theme and Variations.4

11 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by lebedusya1 in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Films and Music, Literary History, Narrative Methods

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

A Trip to the Moon, Alexandre Dumas, Arthur Rackham, Cendrillon, Charles Perrault, Charles S Evans, Cinderella, Cinderella 1899, Cinderella 1911, Cinderella 1912, Cinderella 1914, Contes de Ma Mere L'Oye, Film, Florence La Badie, Georges Melies, Gustave Dore, Henri IV, Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passe, Hugo, Le Voyage dan la Lune, Louis XIII, Mary Pickford, silent film, Sleeping Beauty, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, The Three Musketeers

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

This is the next-to-last in a little series on several of the fairy tales of Charles Perrault (1628-1703) from his 1697 collection, Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passe (“Stories or Tales of Past Time”), better known by a kind of subtitle, Contes de Ma Mere L’Oye (“Tales of My Mother Goose”).

image1chasp

So far, we’ve devoted two posts to “Sleeping Beauty” (actually called by Perrault “La Belle au Bois Dormant”—“The Beautiful Girl in the Sleeping Wood”), covering everything from 19th-century theatrical performances to book illustrations to Disney.

image2belle.jpg

In the third post, we began to look at “Cinderella”, more specifically in opera, from Isouard’s 1810 Cendrillon to Viardot’s 1904 Cendrillon.

Now, in this post, we want to look at “Cinderella” in film, beginning with the 1899 work of Georges Melies (1861-1938)

image3melies.jpg

whom you may know from the 2011 film Hugo

image4hugoposter.jpg

based upon Brian Selznick’s 2007 wonderfully inventive novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

image5hcabret.jpg

Even if you aren’t familiar with Melies, you may recognize his work in this image

image6moon.jpg

from his 1902 science fiction film, Le Voyage dans La Lune (“The Trip to the Moon”), thought by scholars to be the first science fiction film (or at least first surviving such film.  Silent film historians estimate that only about 10% of all silent films made are still available to us.  Here’s a LINK to the film so that you can enjoy it for yourself).

Cendrillon was Melies’ most elaborate film to date and was a commercial success, even though only just under 6 minutes long—which says something for the expectations of the movie-going public of 1899.

image7cend.png

As it is so short, it has only a couple of scenes—the kitchen in Cinderella’s house, the palace ballroom, Cinderella’s room, and what appears to be the outside of the palace—and very much depends upon the viewer already knowing the basic story (it begins, for example, with a very fancily-dressed woman leaving the kitchen and the sudden appearance of the Fairy Godmother, with no introduction at all).  Its greatest strength, for us, is in its transformation scenes (a Melies’ specialty), particularly the change of rats/mice into coachmen and footmen. (And here’s a LINK to the film, see if you agree with the 1899 audience.)

image8trans.jpg

Our second film is from 1911 and is nearly 15 minutes long, meaning that it actually has time to tell the story, if not in a leisurely fashion, at least in a more complete one than the Melies.  This is a US version of the story, starring an early popular favorite, Florence La Badie (or Labadie).

image9aflo.jpg

Forgotten except by silent film enthusiasts, La Badie was a hardworking dare-devil, appearing in nearly 200 films between 1909 and her death in 1917, and doing most of her own stunts.  She was also someone who personified a new look for young women in the years leading up to the Great War—as this portrait (and there are more like it) shows.

image9flo

 

If you follow this LINK, you can see not only the actress, but a “Cinderella” which has almost everything we would expect from the Perrault original.

Florence La Badie had gotten into films through the suggestion of an acting friend, Mary Pickford,

image10pick

 

who starred in our next Cinderella, in 1914.

image11cind

Two things strike us about this:

  1. it’s over 50 minutes long—a great advance from the 1911 15 minutes
  2. the advertising seems to suggest that the audience of 1914 was expected to visit the theatre to see Mary Pickford in Cinderella, rather than Cinderella in which Mary Pickford plays the title role. For us, this foreshadows the obsession with film celebrities which is still with us today.

image12pick

This version, with its almost luxurious length, has plenty of time not only to tell the Perrault story, but to makes two additions to the plot:  Cinderella actually meets the prince before the ball, near her home and they fall in love—but are then separated; the stepsisters visit a fortune-teller, who informs them cryptically that one of their family will be successful at the ball.  (Here’s a LINK so that you can enjoy this more elaborate version.)

In the midst of these US versions, Georges Melies issued a second one himself.  At about 24 minutes long, it is much grander than his 1899 production, spending nearly a quarter of its length on the transformation of Cinderella from kitchen maid to grand lady alone.  The contrast between the 1899 pumpkin coach and the 1913 one illustrates this nicely.

image13acoach.jpg

image13melies2

It did not enjoy the success of the 1899 original, perhaps because, the weight of production values was simply too heavy for the little story inside, which was smothered by all of the plumed hats and sweeping bows.  We admit that we find this version a little slow, but the creation of the pumpkin coach is still as impressive to us as it must have been in 1913.  Here’s a LINK so that you can judge for yourself. It’s dated 1912, by the way, when the film was made, but it premiered in 1913, so we are sticking to the later date.

It has been suggested that Melies, in the look of this later take on the story, was influenced by the work of Gustave Dore (Do-RAY) (1832-1883).

image14dore.jpg

In 1867, Dore—a well-known illustrator–among other things–published Les Contes de Perrault, dessins par Gustave Dore. image15contes

Here’s one of the three illustrations done for the story.

image16cend

To us, however, Melies thinks of the story taking place in the time of Louis XIII (reigned 1610-1643), when Dumas’ “Musketeers” novels are set (with a little 18th-century addition here and there).

image17musk

Dore would appear to be setting it earlier, in the time of Louis’ father, Henri IV (reigned 1589-1610).

image18henri4

One of our very favorite illustrators, Arthur Rackham (1867-1939),

image19ar

tackled both “Cinderella” in 1919 and “Sleeping Beauty” in 1920, with retellings by Charles S. Evans.  Always original and surprising in his approach, Rackham here has produced what we believe to be two of his most inspired works—we’ll talk about them, as well as more versions of “Cinderella”, in our next.

But we’ll finish this post with one more image—as a teaser…

image20sketch

And thank you, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

Advertisements

Theme and Variations.3

04 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by lebedusya1 in Fairy Tales and Myths, Films and Music, Literary History, Narrative Methods

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Cendrill, Charles Perrault, Cinderella, Edmund Dulac, Fairy Godmother, Four and Twenty Fairy Tales, Frederic Chopin, Georges Melies, Giacomo Rossini, Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passe, James Robinson Planche, Jules Massenet, La Cenerentola, Nicolo Isouard, Opera, Pauline Viardot, Sleeping Beauty, William Henry Margetson

As always, dear readers, welcome!

In this posting, we’re continuing the little series we began on the fairy tales of Charles Perrault and what other creators have done with those stories over the centuries.

In 1697, Perrault (1628-1703) published Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passe (“Stories or Tales of Past Time”).

image1perrault.jpg

This little collection (which also came to be known by a secondary title as Contes de Ma Mere L’Oye–“Tales of My Mother Goose”)–contained, among other stories, “Sleeping Beauty”—which we’ve discussed in the first two posts of this series—and “Cinderella”.  (The original 1697 version is available from the BnF—the Bibliotheque nationale de France—here’s a LINK.)

image2cend.JPEG

If you’d like to read the closest one might get to Perrault’s late-17th-century French, you might try the translation by James Robinson Planche, the dramatist/costume-designer/etcetc, whom we mentioned in the first post in this series.  He had conscientiously searched for a first edition of Perrault’s collection, but had to make do with a second, as he tells us, but he strove to recreate in his English the feel of the French original.  Here’s a LINK to Planche’s 1858 Four and Twenty Fairy Tales.  Selected from Those of Perrault, and Other Popular Artists.

image3afourandtwenty.jpg

image3cind.jpg

This is an illustration for that story by Edmund Dulac (1882-1953)

image4dulac

from Edmund Dulac’s Picture-Book for the French Red Cross (1916)—with a LINK to it here.  (It’s an especially interesting book, not only for the beautiful illustrations, but also for the wide range of stories, including a version of the famous Persian/Arabic story of “Majnun and Layla”.)

“Cinderella” has been a favorite subject for opera composers, at least back to 1810, when Nicolo Isouard’s (1773-1818)

image5isouard.jpg

version, Cendrillon, was a  hit in Paris—and then internationally.  Here’s a LINK to a recording of its overture so you can see what pleased Europe in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars.

Isouard’s opera’s popularity was quickly overtaken by Giacomo Rossini’s (1792-1868)

image6rossini.jpg

version in 1817, La Cenerentola.  Here’s an early Italian playbill for it.

image7playbill

And here’s a LINK to the overture. (If you like it, there is at least one complete performance available on YouTube—you can easily find it when you follow this link.)

What’s interesting about these versions is that the Fairy Godmother of the original story has been replaced by a human—in Isouard’s version, with some magical powers, in Rossini’s, with native wit.  There’s no explanation for this—it’s simply the case and, for us, it somehow diminishes the story.  It’s like the Troy movie of 2004, from which the gods had been removed.

image8troy.jpg

Perhaps we’ve always wanted a fairy godmother?

image9fg.jpg

(An image by William Henry Margetson, 1861-1940.)

Our third opera comes from the very end of the 19th century:  Jules Massenet’s (1842-1912)

image10massenet

Cendrillon.

image11cendrillon

Unlike Isouard and Rossini, the fairy godmother, plus assorted fairies, are present and active in this very elaborate telling.  Here’s a LINK to some of the ballet music to give you an idea of the sound of the opera.

Our last opera is the very opposite of Massenet’s, being a chamber opera with only a piano for an orchestra.  It is by a woman composer who began her career as a famous mezzo-soprano, Pauline Viardot (1821-1910).

image12pv.jpg

Not only was she a brilliant singer, with an enormous range, but she was also a pianist so good that she regularly played duets with her friend, Frederic Chopin,

image13fc

as well as speaking half-a-dozen languages fluently.  When her voice began to fail her, she moved to teaching and composition, as well as keeping a salon in which many of the most famous and influential creators of the second half of the 19th century spent their evenings.

Her version of the Cinderella story, Cendrillon, was first performed in 1904.

image14score

As we suggested, it’s the very opposite of the very sumptuous Massenet opera:  7 singers, no chorus, piano for accompaniment, but it’s musically very rich—and includes the fairy godmother—and the pumpkin, etc., although these are all off-stage.  It is not often performed—there’s one recording—

image15pvcend

which we heartily recommend, as it’s beautifully sung.  And here’s a LINK to a production on YouTube, if you’d like to see it.

We’re going to close this posting, take a deep breath, and start writing the last in this little series:  Cinderella on film, beginning, in a surprisingly-early (if brief) version by Georges Melies—from 1899.

But thanks, as always, for reading and definitely

MTCIDC

CD

ps

If you read us, you know us—we can never resist a PS—and this is just a visual.  In our survey of Cinderella images, we found this.  Need we say more?

image16bedroom.jpg

The Doubtful Sea Series Facebook Page

The Doubtful Sea Series Facebook Page

  • lebedusya1

Categories

  • Artists and Illustrators
  • Economics in Middle-earth
  • Fairy Tales and Myths
  • Films and Music
  • Heroes
  • Imaginary History
  • J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Language
  • Literary History
  • Maps
  • Medieval Russia
  • Military History
  • Military History of Middle-earth
  • Narnia
  • Narrative Methods
  • Poetry
  • Research
  • Terra Australis
  • The Rohirrim
  • Theatre and Performance
  • Tolkien
  • Uncategorized
  • Villains
  • Writing as Collaborators
Follow doubtfulsea on WordPress.com

Across the Doubtful Sea

Recent Postings

  • On Time (1) February 13, 2019
  • Thirty Days Hath… February 6, 2019
  • Death, Within 24 Hours January 30, 2019
  • Unhealing January 23, 2019
  • On the Horns January 16, 2019
  • Ring Composition January 9, 2019
  • A Little Ring, the Least of Rings January 2, 2019
  • Peace December 26, 2018
  • Hands Down December 19, 2018

Blog Statistics

  • 29,045 Views

Posting Archive

  • February 2019 (2)
  • January 2019 (5)
  • December 2018 (4)
  • November 2018 (4)
  • October 2018 (5)
  • September 2018 (4)
  • August 2018 (5)
  • July 2018 (4)
  • June 2018 (4)
  • May 2018 (5)
  • April 2018 (4)
  • March 2018 (4)
  • February 2018 (4)
  • January 2018 (5)
  • December 2017 (4)
  • November 2017 (4)
  • October 2017 (4)
  • September 2017 (4)
  • August 2017 (5)
  • July 2017 (4)
  • June 2017 (4)
  • May 2017 (5)
  • April 2017 (4)
  • March 2017 (5)
  • February 2017 (4)
  • January 2017 (4)
  • December 2016 (4)
  • November 2016 (5)
  • October 2016 (6)
  • September 2016 (5)
  • August 2016 (5)
  • July 2016 (5)
  • June 2016 (5)
  • May 2016 (4)
  • April 2016 (4)
  • March 2016 (5)
  • February 2016 (4)
  • January 2016 (4)
  • December 2015 (5)
  • November 2015 (5)
  • October 2015 (4)
  • September 2015 (5)
  • August 2015 (4)
  • July 2015 (5)
  • June 2015 (5)
  • May 2015 (4)
  • April 2015 (3)
  • March 2015 (4)
  • February 2015 (4)
  • January 2015 (4)
  • December 2014 (5)
  • November 2014 (4)
  • October 2014 (6)
  • September 2014 (1)
Advertisements

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy