Les victimes de l'alcoolisme

Ambitious but primitive cautionary tale about the evils of the demon drink. At a time when most films still hadn't progressed beyond point-and-shoot reflections of the real world, Zecca, like fellow countryman Georges Melies, was creating works with multiple scenes and a coherent narrative.

That's a trick that Houdini did to the audience's amazement, reportedly dislocating his shoulders to accomplish. This movie seems to indicate that a man dying of alcoholic an insane asylum could do the same.

Of course, I mock a very seriously intended short subject. This is one of many shorts, like Robert Paul's better remembered BUY YOUR OWN CHERRIES, that moralists produced in the silent era. Alcoholism was, and remains a problem, but stridency of the temperance groups -- actually abolitionists, but using a softer term to avoid alienating the moderate and occasional drinkers -- was part of the Progressive movement, which held that if we only forbid people to do things we don't like, they would be much better off. So we would. Or we might go get our booze, tobacco, pot or hard drugs from people so disjoint from society that we destroy it in the process.

However, this is not the forum to argue politics. I will note this is a very advanced film for 1902, being offered in five scenes, on elaborately painted sets. It was probably not intended solely for movie programs, but for anti-booze lectures, Chautauquas, and conferences.

The heavy-handedness of this teetotaler polemic, "Victims of Drink," or "Alcohol and Its Victims," is done no favors by the early story film aesthetic. In five scenes, a man goes from blissful domesticity to keeling over after removing his straightjacket--Houdini style--in a padded cell. In between, he wanders by a wine merchant, starts drinking and gambling in a bar, and returns to his family now living in an attic only to spaz and pass out on the floor. As severe a case of alcoholism as I've ever seen.

Each scene consists of a single, static long shot. Titles cards describe proceeding action in the tableau style of the day. For early in the development of the story film, the continuity isn't bad and rather ambitious, I suppose, but don't forget that next door to Ferdinand Zecca making clumsy melodramas such as this for Pathé, at about the same time Georges Méliès was making "A Trip to the Moon" (1902). Across the Channel, the likes of G. A. Smith and James Williamson were already altering camera positions and dissecting scenes. Even in 1902, there were masterpieces, and, then, there were films that were, well, like this one.

(From Cinémathèque Française 35mm print)

A good old classic. As in the early days, a moral story on what happens to a man if he starts to drink and gamble. Yes! Drinking and gambling are bad for you! :) Anyways, I enjoyed watching it, since it so well reflects one of the popular themes of cinema of the early days: the moral story. This movie also reminds you of, how it was like in those days, especially what it was like to be poor. Movies of this era are always worth seeing!