Le frotteur

Ascriptions by Gaumont with respect to films of this period are not to be trusted. The only means we have of dating films from this period is by their position in the 1908 Gaumont catalogue which, luckily, seems to be very straightforwadly chronological. For more on this see my reviews of La Vérité sur l'homme-singe (c. Jan 1907), La Course à la saucisse (March 1907) and Le Billet de banque (c. April-May 1907).

Alice Guy got engaged to Herbert Blaché on Christmas Day, 1906. They maried on 4 March and she resigned her post at Gaumont immediately afterwards in order to accompany him to the US where he had been charged by Gaumont with the marketing of phonoscenes.

These phonoscenes ("talkies" based mainly on operas and popula songs) were a major priority for Gaumont who believed - twenty years too early - that they represented the future of film. Over a hundred were made at this time and Alice Guy was in charge of their difficult (the actors, sometimes a large cast, had to mime in playback to the recordings) and time-consuming production.

So already by late 1906 many of the comedy shorts were being directed by her three very capable assistants - Louis Feuillade, who was responsible for all the scripts including those directed by Guy herself), Roméo Bosetti and Étiene Arnaud. In most cases we do not in practice know who the director was.

Guy did however certainly find time to direct two films in early 1907 - Les Résulats du féminisme (which she much later remade in the US) and L'Asssassin (a "grand guignol" melodrama which she mentions in her biography). These are very notably different in style from the more slapstick comedies made by the three lads. They are also probably the last films made by Guy before her resignation and departure at the beginning of March.

This film and La Glu, also wrongly attributed by Gaumont to Guy, appear long afterwrds in the catalogue. To illustrate, La Vérité sur l'homme-singe (director unknown, which follows the Christmas films made in 1906) is number 1570, Guy's Les Résulats du féminisme (Jan-Feb 1907) is 1573 and L'Assassin (Jan-Feb 1907) is 1574. Arnaud's La Ceinture Electrqiue, almost certainly made after the departure of Guy and perfomed in London in pril 1907) is probably March 1907 and is number 1584 in the catalogue. Le Billet de banque (April-May), wrongly ascribed to Guy, is number 1616.

Le Frotteur (July-August 1907) is much later still in the catalogue (number 1648) and must have been made many months after Guy's departure. The same applies to La Glu (1666) which was shown in the US in November 1907.

All these films (regardless of director) would have been written by Feuillade. They could have been directed by Feuillade himself or by Roméo Bosetti or by Étienne Arnaud. The later ones were obviously not made by Guy who was at the time rather preoccupied with giving birth to her first child, Simone in New Jersey.

Judging by these Gaumont films ascribed to Alice Guy from 1906 and 1907, crosscutting was increasingly becoming common practice around this time, although employment of the technique tends to be brief, as it is here. But, the film is only comprised of five shots, so everything about it is brief. Continuity across shots is fluid, as well, and follows the axis of action. The falling through the floors bit is especially well done. Otherwise, "The Cleaning Man" is a mess of knockabout slapstick, where the titular cleaning man ends up destroying what were already flimsy sets by Gaumont.

In other films from Guy accessible today, crosscutting also appears in "The Drunken Mattress," "The Truth Behind the Ape-Man" (both 1906), "The Glue," "A Four-Year-Old Heroine" and "The Irresistible Piano" (all 1907), as well as perhaps in others.

By the way, I love fellow IMDb reviewer Martin Hafer's comments regarding "frotteurism" as a psychological term for a "compulsion by perverts to brush up against strangers," as that adds an entirely new perspective to "Le Frotteur"--how he runs into the maid and everyone else upon the slippery floor. It would explain a lot, actually.

The maid announces the cleaning man and the master leaves the study. The man proceeds to clean the place with such energy that the furniture is all smashed, the floor is covered with suds so slippery that everyone who enters falls down and the people eating in the apartment a floor below must flee because plaster from the ceiling pelts them.

It's a typical Gaumont half-reel farce for the year and the only point of interest is to wonder which of two possible directors is responsible: Alice Guy or Louis Feuillade? There are several items on the recent Gaumont sets in which the shorts are attributed to one, while the IMDB attributes them to t'other. I'll take a whack at the controversy, split the difference and opine that Madame Guy was probably operating as what we would call a producer today, and Feuillade was the guy looking over the cameraman's shoulder and giving the orders when Madame wasn't there to overrule him.