Kaveh Nabatian | Vapor / 2010

transformation

by Douglas Messerli

 

Kaveh Nabatian (screenwriter and director) Vapor / 2010 [11 minutes]

 

In Mexico City a middle-aged man, Enrique Salgado (Marco Ledezma) who has apparently been long closeted, has just retired from his job is left alone for a few days, apparently without a wife and daughter, who will be returning so we gather from a phone message.   

 

     The film’s story, like its title which refers to the gay baths were this man visits and engages in gay sex, is enwrapped in a steamy vapor in which its difficult to perceive all the details. What has driven him to a sudden change in his life appears to be a telephone call from a famous photographer who wants to shoot him nude for a male magazine, an idea to which Enrique seems open as long as it remains secret. The photographer tells him that his “secret” will hit the newsstands next month. Oh, and one more thing, adds the photographer, he wants Enrique to shave his head.

    It is as if the possibility of both becoming someone else, a man now without a job and with an entirely new appearance, that pushes him out of his long homophobic fog, as he removes his wedding band, shaves his head, visits the gay baths, engages in sex, and poses for the photo shoot.

 

    Canadian director Kaveh Nabatian takes through the transformative day in this man’s life, when visions of himself as a child haunt him, and homosexual desires of all sorts—including quick glimpses into possible attraction to young boys and an S&M like sexual encounter—release him from the foundations of his previous life.

 

     We never discover what happens to this new-made man, although we hear of a middle-aged bald-headed man discovered dead, apparently on the streets of Mexico City, having been seen only an hour earlier. Is this Enrique? Has he ended his own life after his transformation, or is the news story only an emblematic statement of the man who has discovered himself in the past 24-hours, symbolic of the closure of his past life?

      No answers are given, but we observe throughout Enrique entering his new world with a sense of relief and purpose, curious yet relaxed as he slowly runs the razor over his full head of hair, fucks a man hard up against a wall, sinks into the hot waters of a sauna, and playfully poses before the camera. How it might all end is almost beside the point; he has already transcended the world in which he previously existed.

    

Los Angeles, November 18, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2023).

Alice Guy Blaché and Romeo Bosetti | Le Matela alcolique aka Le matelas pileptique (The Drunken Mattress) / 1906

carrying the gag to its limits

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alice Guy Blaché and Romeo Bosetti (directors) Le Matela alcolique aka Le matelas pileptique (The Drunken Mattress) / 1906

 

Alice Guy’s and Romeo Bosetti’s Gaumont production of Le Matelas alcooliqe (The Drunken Mattress) (1906) is certainly of her best early comedies, and is quite clearly the most physically engaged of her works. In this 10:15 short, a man playing the maid in drag is asked to repair an old mattress which has developed a tear.

 

     Presumably, Guy determined to put her co-creator in woman’s clothing more out of necessity than comic intent; surely no everyday woman might be able to lug around a double mattress with a drunken man stitched up within. Even the hefty shemale is challenged by the piece of bedding as she transfers it from a couple’s bedroom into a field in order to restuff and sew it together before returning—after a short shot of liquor—on an almost impossible voyage back into the village bedroom.  

     En route it is half-carried and rolled down a long hill, falls from a bridge, and must be lugged back up a high stairway, before it falls again into a deep hole (perhaps a grave), is hauled back up to the couple’s room, laid upon by husband and wife twice, and, finally, tossed out their window in disgust.

     Somehow the drunken lout survives, along with the maid, both of whom are carted away by local police in reward for their remarkable endurance.

      If the actor’s feminine apparel may be only a matter of necessity, it also creates an odd sense of mischievous revenge on the typical bourgeois heterosexual couple. Who else but a queer would want to go to such astounding lengths to make sure that another man—and a drunken one at that—intrude upon their most intimate moments of their life? But this maid in drag is determined, where any normative female maid would have long ago been so disgusted by a bedding that pokes, bends, rolls, rubs against others, and falls and stands of its own will, that she would abandoned the task. If the filmmaker Georges Méliès put demons into the bedroom in order to raise havoc with its innocent inhabitants, Guy is more fascinated by a normal human being serving the same purpose by simply being inebriated by demon rum.

 

    The gag here is taken so far that eventually it loses its comic potential so that it almost seems necessary to bury it before, bringing it back to life, it grows funnier than ever, particularly as the proper couple crawl nicely into bed with the all-too-human prop. By film’s end one has to wonder who of this bedtime threesome is the most offended by the situation: the wife, her husband, or the now probably sober man sewn up into the “sack.” Groucho Marx might have simply curled up and made the best of it. 

 

Los Angeles, June 18, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (blog) and World Cinema Review (June 2021).

Sigmund Lubin | Meet Me at the Fountain / 1904

french kiss

by Douglas Messerli

Sigmund Lubin (screenplay and director) Meet Me at the Fountain / 1904

 

A French nobleman, determining finally to marry, posts an advertisement in an US newspaper in hopes of finding a rich wife. He asks possible candidates to meet him at the fountain in a well-known park (ironically, Grant’s tomb).

     For a few moments he stands alone in front of the fountain with only a woman pushing a baby carriage passing by. Obviously, in a good mood, the man briefly attempts to diddle with the child, the mother or nanny, utterly offended, scolding him and hurrying off.

     Soon one of the women “candidates” appears, another quickly following, before another and another and, ultimately an entire army of would-be wives have gathered. The gentleman, suddenly realizing his dilemma, determines to flee.

     And so the chase begins as the man, attempting to escape the women, he struggles to rid himself of his stalkers by presenting them with various obstacles—a fence, stairs, a small cliff, a streetcar, and a tree onto he which climbs out on a limb—all seemingly unnavigable to the hopeful brides dressed in their turn-of-the-century long skirts and several layers of undergarments. Jumping, hopping, bending, climbing, and simple running does not at all daunt these devilish damsels.

      We have long ago spotted the ugliest of these women following up the pack. And when, out of desperation, the count dives into the river, the last arrives first to help him climb out, claiming her prize.

      She happens to be the famed transvestite performer, Gilbert Saroni, who, in the film’s last scene is dressed up as a bride standing next to her groom, the nobleman. The two men turn toward one another and French kiss.

       Surely this was the first representation of two men marrying on film—one of them perhaps transgender—but it certainly was not the last. Just a few months later, Edwin S. Porter released on his Edison label How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns, basically a repeat of the earlier film with a few refinements.

 

Los Angeles, December 7, 2020

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (December 2020).

Louis Lumière | Le Cake-Walk au Nouveau Cirque / 1903

parisian cakewalks

by Douglas Messerli

 

Louis Lumière (director) Le Cake-Walk au Nouveau Cirque / 1903

 

The dance called “the cakewalk” began as a parody among black slaves concerning the pretensions of their white masters, but soon developed into its own dance form, sweeping the US from 1890 to 1910. Huge contests were held among black couples who attempted to outdo one another in their high-step maneuvers, the prize generally being an elaborately decorated cake. White couples soon followed, in particular the “cakewalk champions” Mr. and Mrs. Elks, who performed their dance at Paris’ Nouveau Cirque in a review titled “Les Joyeux Nègres."

     Alongside their performance danced the famed child couple, the brother and sister team of Rudy and Fredy Walker, among other couples, including the famous Jack Brown and Charles Gregory.

     Throughout 1902 and 1903, Paris was overwhelmed by the cakewalk craze, with another performance of the “Florida Creole Girls,” seven African-American women dancing at the Casino de Paris. By 1908 the popular dance form had made its way into the higher echelons of culture with Debussy’s Golliwogg’s Cake-walk as part of his Children’s Corner.

     In 1903 a 5-minute film was made of the cakewalk dancers. The biographer of the Walkers, Lotz long argued the film was made by the French Pathé company, leading commentators such as popegrutch on Century Film Project to argue that the director was Alice Guy. But Jim Radcliff in his The American Songbook convincingly demonstrates that the film was actually the work of Louis Lumière, and that the film did not depict a single shoot, but was an amalgamation of five different short films from Lumière of the period, corresponding to the catalog numbers 1350-1354:

 

1350……Nègres, [I]

1351……Négrillons

1352……Nègres, [II]

1353……Les Elkes, champions du cake-walk

1354……Final [“Les Soeurs Pérès” and the other previous performers] (brackets represent my addition)

 

     Seeing the final film today it is hard to imagine as a collage of five separate films, particularly since we see each of the former dancers lined up against the wall while others perform in the foreground, and the last “Final” scene consists of all the previous dancers joining in one long final promenade and curtain call. Radcliff bases his evidence also on the postcards that accompany the films, so I shall bow to his wisdom.

     For the purposes of this publication, it is the first dance, attributed to Brown and Gregory, the latter dancing, as usual, in drag, that most matters. Their number, in fact, introduces the dance itself before the other duos provide variations of the work.

 

   Radcliff questions even if it’s Gregory in performance, suggesting that it doesn’t look like Gregory given his representation elsewhere on the postcards. The Lumière description itself certainly does not resolve the matter:  “n°1350……. ‘Les Nègres,’ a team which consists of two men, the taller one in drag.” But most commentators are convinced that the men in the film are Brown and Gregory, and to it appears to me that their postcard costuming and posing (show above) is highly similar to the dance performed in the short film.

     Also of great interest is the final scene which includes to Spanish sisters, Jeanne and Nina Pérès, one of them costumed in a modified version of male attire.

     And finally, one has to acknowledge that if mockery is at the heart of this dance form, performing the dance as a same-sex couple throws the Southern Gentleman and his Belle into a new perspective.

     All of these dances are joyfully raucous and another piece of evidence of how audiences of the day loved drag performances. The film, as a whole, was remarkably popular.

      I might add that in presenting dance, theater, and other arts as did Lumière and Pathé, cinema provided their audiences a role similar to what Instagram, Facebook, and other such services do today.

 

Los Angeles, March 24, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2023).

Ferdinand Zecca | Par le trou de la serrure (What Is Seen Through a Keyhole) / 1901

what the porter saw

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ferdinand Zecca (director) Par le trou de la serrure (What Is Seen Through a Keyhole) / 1901

 

French director Ferdinand Zecca’s Par le trou de la serrure (What Is Seen Through a Keyhole) apparently premiered in 1901, released by the Pathé Company. However, it has also been titled What Happened to the Inquisitive Janitor and, in variations released in England, What Happend: The Inquisitive Janitor and Peeping Tom, the latter claiming to have been released in the US on June 1897.

     Both English and US film companies often stole Pathé and other film company’s products, releasing them sometimes, it appears, on false dates to confuse their audiences and to escape lawsuits. The US Peeping Tom version lists no director, so I will presume the Pathé information is more reliable.

    This is a simple visual tale of a hotel porter spying on four guests, the first a woman who slowly unpins her hair, letting it fall around her face.

    Looking into the second keyhole he sees a woman unloosening her corset, after which she quickly pulls out large stuffed socks which served as her breasts. She lifts off her false eyelashes, before removing her wig to fully reveal that she is a male transvestite.

      In the third room the porter witnesses a woman sitting on a gentleman’s lap as they pour our wine or champagne, drinking to one another and eating what appear to be appetizers.

      As he moves down to inspect the fourth keyhole a man suddenly appears, immediately realizing what was about to happen. He throws the porter down the stairs. The film suggests that it might have truly interesting if the porter had discovered the man in his room before he prepared to go out, for otherwise why might he be so severely offended?

       Zecca, it is said, introduced documentaries, crime films, and works on religious subjects to Pathé. The film above was one of the first French films that was edited to combine wide and medium close-up shots.

       Clearly What Is Seen Through the Keyhole represents an element of voyeurism that occurred in early French silent cinema. Georges Méliès’ granddaughter described What Is Seen as being in dubious taste. It was apparently distributed in the US in 1902 by Kleine Optical Company, the Edison Manufacturing Company, and the Lubin Manufacturing Company; so obviously it had a large audience on this side of the ocean.

 

Los Angeles, January 29, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (January 2021).

Edwin S. Porter and George S. Fleming | The Old Maid Having Her Picture Taken / 1901 || Edwin S. Porter | The Old Maid in Her Drawing Room / 1901

two old maids

by Douglas Messerli

 

Edwin S. Porter and George S. Fleming (directors) The Old Maid Having Her Picture Taken / 1901

Edwin S. Porter (director) The Old Maid in Her Drawing Room / 1901

 

Edwin S. Porter, famed for his memorable films Jack and the Beanstalk (1902), The Great Train Robbery (1903), The Prisoner of Zenda (1913), and his pioneer cinematic inventions as well for heading the Edison Manufacturing Company and the Famous Players Film Company, was a legend of early Hollywood.

    But in 1901 he and his co-director George S. Fleming shot a comic one-reeler of two minutes in length which might have been negligible if not for one fact.

    The film’s events are humorous, although the actor misses an important cue which I’ll mention shortly. But to call it clever would be an outrageous exaggeration.

   An old maid—the stereotype of a physically ugly, spiritually undesirable woman— enters a photograph’s studio, for what purpose we cannot imagine since the eyesore we glimpse surely has no visual admirers.

       The Edison Catalog of the day describes the “plot” perfectly:

 

“An old maid is walking about the studio while the photographer is getting his camera ready. She first looks at a hanger [a gathering of small photographs], which immediately falls from the wall, not being able to stand her gaze. Then she looks at the clock, and her face causes it to fall to the floor with a crash. She then walks over to the mirror, which suddenly cracks in several places. The photographer then poses her. Just as he is to press the button the camera explodes with a great puff of smoke, completely destroying the camera and demolishing the studio. The picture finishes up with the old maid tipping back in her chair and losing her balance, displaying a large quantity of fancy lace goods. A sure winner.”

      Unfortunately, the actor who plays the old maid responds to the photographer’s camera too early, leaping backwards just before the camera explodes. As a commentator explains it, in those days when several pictures might be shot in same afternoon, “it never occurred to Porter to do a re-take.”

     This series of absurd events may have certainly won over its audiences for a few moments, but I should imagine that it wasn’t a movie that they took home to describe to their families or could even recall the very next day.

      It interests me and possibly my readers, and perhaps was memorable even to its original audiences only because the “pinch-faced.” long-snozzled” old maid was played by Gilbert Saroni, the acclaimed female impersonator who performed in vaudeville, minstrel shows, and in other films such as The Old Maid in the Horsecar (1901), The Old Maid in the Drawing Room (1901, reviewed below), The Old Maid’s First Visit of a Theatre (1903), The Old Maid’s Lament (1903), and numerous other “old maid” movies along with Goo Eyes (1903), The Lost Child (1904), and in that same year the far superior short, Meet Me at the Fountain, which I also review in these pages.

      In Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall, Richard Barrios writes of cross-dressing and Saroni in particular:

 

“ It was all in fun, an extension of what audiences had seen in vaudeville houses, and most hints of sexual suggestiveness come only retroactively. Nevertheless, putting drag in front of a close-up camera made for a different dimension, heightening the ambiguity as it weakened the illusion. In the very early 1900s, a skinny comedian named Gilbert Saroni appeared in a series of short Old Maid films that now seem like utter low campfests. The Old Maid in the Drawing Room (1901) is a good example: Saroni (with perhaps three teeth in his head) carries on in prissy affront, and the spectacle seems less suited to a drawing room than it does a Greenwich Village bar minutes before closing time. “

 

      Barrios pretty well sums up Saroni’s very short performance in The Drawing Room where the actor, dressed up in full female attire stands against a wall, the fan in his right hand in almost constant use, while he flaps and flings his wrists of the other while telling, evidently, a “not to be believed” story as he smiles and exposes his gums as if to accentuate his tale’s absolute incredibility.

 

Los Angeles, December 6, 2020

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (December 2020).

Alice Guy (Blaché) | Sage femme de première Classe (Midwife to the Upper Class) / 1901

pick of the litter

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alice Guy (Blaché) (director) Sage femme de première Classe (Midwife to the Upper Class) / 1901

 

In her first narrative film she made for Gaumont studios—as opposed to her recordings of performances such as those I describe above and tableaux like La Fée aux Choux (The Cabbage Patch Fairy) (1901) which simply establishes the myth that children are conceived within the leaves of cabbages—Alice Guy Blaché employed elements of drag which she would use time and again over the years to challenge and rectify male authority, as well as simply allowing herself to feature women in her films.

 

    The three characters of Sage femme de première Classe (Midwife to the Upper Class) (1901) are all women, including the midwife, played by Guy’s then secretary, and the upper-class husband (played by Guy herself) and wife (Yvonne Mugnier-Serand) who visit the midwife’s “stand” to purchase a new baby, as if they were out on a stroll to buy some vegetables or fruit.

     For a few moments, the couple remain at a distance from the midwife and her “dolls” as if debating the entire proposition. The wife suggests she might like to purchase one, but is not sure whether or not her husband approves. When he indicates that he does also want a child, even opening up his purse the demonstrate he’s ready to put his money up for the “adoption,” the couple embrace and kiss as they move closer to the sales stand.

     The midwife proceeds to show them a series of “dolls,” some of them looking quite like human babies, others more like large wooden figures such as the Nutcracker in Tchaikovsky’s famed ballet—apparently only models of the real thing, none of them appealing to the couple.

     Finally, the wife suggests they take a look at the “stock,” marked by a sign posted upon a nearby door. The midwife gladly opens the door to them, accompanying the eager pair down a lane between cabbages, pulling out prime “real” infants along the way and placing them upon blankets near the camera. The first one she lifts up is quite appealing, as the wife holds it for a few seconds with joy. In a clearly racist moment, the second child she pulls from the cabbage, a black baby, horrifies the couple who pull away in obvious disdain, as she lays it back into the cabbage head.

      She quickly pulls out a couple more brawling babies, placing them on the blankets along with the others. Finally, after putting five infants upon the blanket, she pulls out a sixth child who seems to totally please the picky couple who quickly pay and march out with their prize, leaving the exhausted midwife to pick up the now bawling kids and put them back into their cabbage beds.

     I think we must read this little tale as a rather savage satire of the upper class, arguing that they not only are able to buy the most beautiful homes, clothing, and possessions, but even get their “pick of the litter” when it comes to children.

     It is fascinating, moreover, to think that this little film—quite unintentionally of course—represents the first very first cinematic depiction of two women “adopting” a child.

 

Los Angeles, June 17, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (June 2021).