Century Film Project

Working inside a studio, Alice Guy presents us with a simple narrative comedy that indicates the style of humor that would be common in film for many years. Set in a park, with a wily beggar and a policeman as antagonist, it sets the stage for much later work of Charlie Chaplin and others.

Our “blind man” sits on a bench with his dog, playing a pipe. When some passing pedestrians drop coins in his cup, he looks at them closely before thanking his benefactors. Now a policeman comes along and chases him off. Moments later, a weary pedestrian sits on the bench and reads from a magazine, quickly dropping off to sleep. The beggar comes back and finds him, trading hats and stealing his watch, also leaving the sign and the dog with the sleeping man. Now, the policeman returns and thinks there is another fake blind beggar, so he shakes the man awake and chases him as well, at which point the entire cast comes on stage to laugh at his misfortune.

Alice Guy

This film’s title in French is “L’Aveugle fin de siècle.” I point that out because there is a difference between how we read “turn-of-the-Century” today and what “fin de siècle” meant then We don’t use the term “turn-of-the-Century” to refer to the period around 1999-2001, when our most recent Century began, so the term has a kind of quaint, dated feel for a modern viewer. However, “fin de siècle” which was used at the end of the nineteenth century really implied something “modern” to the people at that time: a “turn-of-the-Century” blind man was one who was different to the blind men of simpler, more innocent times. As we see in this instance, he isn’t necessarily blind at all. The other interesting aspect of this movie is its shooting location. The “park” backdrop makes it entirely obvious that this was shot indoors, apparently on a theatrical stage. This is also how Méliès was working at the time, but where he devised beautiful and imaginative backdrops, these appear to be generic stage backdrops, possibly used for vaudeville acts. No effort is made at creating realism, although it would seem simple enough to have shot the whole thing in a real park. One final note is that comedies at this time often provided what I think of as “visual laugh tracks” by showing people laughing at the funny part.

Director: Alice Guy

Camera: Unknown, possibly Alice Guy

Starring: Unknown

Run Time: 1 Min

You can watch it for free: here (no music).