Une dame vraiment bien

A pretty and very well-dressed young lady that they don't pay attention to what they are doing and simply walks through town. However, the men, being men, are so captivated by her beauty that they stop paying attention to what they are doing--resulting in a long string of disasters until the local police come to the rescue.

When someone today watches films from the late 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, they may not realize just how far films have come--and assume the old film is terrible. But what is important to know is the context. Films as we know them today just didn't exist--and I am not just talking about the sound or color. The plots, scripts, characterizations, etc. were all pretty much unimportant in these earliest films. In many cases, the director just yelled out suggestions for improvisations and that was THE script through the 1910s. However, "Une Dame Vraiment Bien", compared to the average film of the day, it was darn funny and well-constructed--with good timing and sight gags galore. Given the context, it was a successful film and is mildly watchable today--if you are a fan of these very early films. I liked its gentle sense of humor and timing. Otherwise, you may not get much out of this one.

....would be a better translation than "a very fine lady" the English title of this Feuillade short of long ago.

An elegant woman goes for a stroll as the Concierge is washing the sidewalk.A man turns round to admire her ,but he doesn't see the street lamp in front of him:domestic fight with the missus.Everywhere she passes through ,she causes small disasters .She continues her way ,very quiet ,and without catching sight of what's happening in her trail.Nobody seems to bear her a grudge :the privilege of being beautiful.Two gendarmes arrive and see her back home ,in a very special way.

A good funny short by Feuillade,which has worn well.

As a handsome young woman walks down a series of streets, men's heads turn. They trip over fireplugs or turn the hose they are watering flowering with onto other people, or the women they are with glare at them.

I'm fond of these antique movies and look at them occasionally, even when I have seen them before. In examining this collaboration between Louis Feuillade, Romeo Bosetti and a set of unnamed performers, I realized this is the earliest appearance of an Internet meme that arose perhaps last year: it's a shot of a man and a woman. They are together, but he's looking at another woman off to the side, and the woman he is with is looking at him with an expression composed of astonishment and anger. Usually this meme is accompanied by text.

Here is the same idea. Which only goes to show that not everything was first thought of in the past twenty years.

Une dame vraiment bien (1908)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Simple but mildly amusing comedy has a beautiful woman walking through the streets, which is enough to set off all sorts of damage of the men keep their eyes on her and not on what they should be doing. I'm really not sure what the story is behind two directors being needed on such a simple film but that really doesn't matter as we get some nice laughs. The film only runs four-minutes and we pretty much get the same joke over and over but it's pleasant and true enough to make even the most jaded person smile. We get countless scenes of men doing something only to be distracted by beauty and that's when trouble follows. This includes a man watering some grass only to then water a man sitting next to him. We see a man turn to look at the woman only to then run into a pole. One man trips over the sidewalk to then be punched by his girlfriend. That type of humor over and over. The movie isn't a long-lost classic but it's charming enough for fans of early cinema.

This early French comedy has a fetching young lady causing mayhem as she takes an aimless stroll through the streets of a town. Wherever our mademoiselle wanders, men turn to enjoy a long look, completely forgetting that they were approaching a lamp-post, table, baby's carriage, etc before they spied her and are therefore on a collision course with disaster.

It's all fairly amusing, but to be honest it's pretty much the same joke played over and over again so that, even at four minutes, it grows a little repetitive. It's interesting to see that sight gags still in use half-a-century later are in evidence here. Man carrying ladders and planks have always been a liability, it seems...