Century Film Project

Alternate Title: Saharet Performs the Bolero

This is another short dance film from Alice Guy. These movies seem to have made up a good amount of her product, at least to judge from what had survived.

What we see is a typical stage with a Spanish patio backdrop and performers in hand-tinted Spanish dress. A pair, male and female, dance in the center of the stage, and some female supporting dancers twirl around them and occasionally move to center stage. The central woman begins quite demurely, and becomes more energetic as the dance progresses.

The Bolero is a dance from Latin America, which apparently first broke out in Cuba and became popular in other countries. Here, we see it performed by “Madame Saharet,” an Australian dancer who had made her name on Broadway in 1897, and toured Europe several times. She would go on to make several films in Germany before the War, and her future husband would be arrested by the British for carrying pro-German literature across national lines in 1916. I have no information about her dance partner, nor any of the supporting dancers. I wonder, from having seen some of Guy’s sound experiments, whether this was originally a “phonoscène” for which the sound disc is now lost. It might explain the ongoing interest in simple dance movies into the 1900’s if they were being presented with synch-sound, or it might just be that audiences were excited by the exotic costumes and dances.

Director: Alice Guy

Camera: Unknown (possibly Alice Guy or Anatole Thiberville)

Cast: Saharet, Unknown

Run Time: 2 Min

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