La fée aux choux

Well, this one is quite a bore - nothing more to see than a lady dressed as fairy picking up babies out of large fake cabbages.

2/10

Let's talk about Alice Guy. She started out as a secretary at Gaumont and was soon put in charge of film production, yet for some reason, although her IMDb page credits her first movie as director as LES DEMOLISSEURS, (now apparently lost), the page for this movie appears later in production, has a release date of 1900 and the IMDb claims it is the first movie directed by a woman. It's also written by her. It also credits her as one of three actresses appearing in the movie, although there is only one.

It's a minute and a half of a woman in fancy dress dancing around a cabbage field, occasionally plucking a baby out. Some modern feminist writers claim that early women in the film business were a lot like modern feminists. I think it better to actually look at the works of early movies, as many of them as possible, and then make up your mind. This looks silly and charming and not the least feminist to me. Clearly someone -- or several people -- have been talking about Mlle. Guy and this movie without bothering to look at anything pertinent.

Ms. Guy, an enchanting actor, makes the connection between humanity and nature. Mirthful and succinct. -David Olive, Toronto

This film is actually lost. No footage survives. Online footage is a remake from the year 1900 by the same woman director. I was astounded when viewing the 1900 film. The 1896 original was, I was informed, the first film ever directed by a woman. One might expect a woman's touch in her own remake? Instead the 1900 version depicts what amounts to risking harm to babies, perhaps not deliberate but totally inexcusable, needless and careless!

The film is a 'fantasy' with a mother nature figure grinning inanely and posing whilst plucking babies out of the cabbage patch. It is quite clear the 1st two babies are real and when roughly picking the first one up and plonking it down the stupid and irresponsible woman - also the director, apparently - lets go of the baby's head allowing it to fall backwards onto the floor. The baby then reacts flailing its arms and appearing to cry. I can only hope the floor was thickly carpeted but it may have been hard and even this small drop could injure such a young baby. Not content with this the woman then picks the next baby up by one arm/shoulder! Anyone knows this could cause a baby pain and possible injury. She plonks that baby onto the floor still grinning inanely and posing. The third cabbage she reaches into produces something which apparently is a doll. That is haphazardly put on the floor and just looks creepy because it is immobile and so appears rather like a dead baby.

I find this film unacceptably careless and the woman would be questioned for her poor treatment of the babies nowadays. Instead she is revered as the world's first woman director! The fact this was 1900 does NOT excuse this behaviour at all. There are other early films depicting animal cruelty (such as 'Cock Fight No. 2' and the appalling 'Electrocuting an Elephant') but this so far is the only film I have seen depicting possibly dangerous treatment of babies. Ironic that the woman director and mother nature figures are the ones guilty of this. By 1900 there were impressive and innovative works of early film being produced by the likes of Georges Melies, Walter R. Booth and James Williamson which are hugely technically and artistically advanced compared to this very crude and inept film.

To be fair the 1896 film cannot be commented on or assessed at all as it is lost. It apparently had one real baby and dolls. If we assume the one baby was treated more carefully in that then it would be far better than the 1900 remake but if the remake is so crude that even for 1896 it would be unimpressive then the 1896 film would be equally unimpressive I am sure.

Considered the first film made by a female director and the first feature of fiction in cinema, "The Cabbage Fairy" (La fée aux choux) is a charming piece of film history. Based on a European fairy tale, the film is a minute-sized glimpse at the directress Alice Guy-Blaché playing a fairy who plucks babies out of cabbages while employing theatrical gestures with a winning smile in every move. Pioneering and still quite entertaining, the film is a fascinating view on the origins of film and the distant past.