Century Film Project

This very odd offering from Pathé apparently traces its origins to a popular music hall routine that has since earned a place in obscurity. It offers a glimpse into the world of entertainment popular audiences knew long before we were born.

A proscenium-style stage is established, with a small table to one side. In the center stands a very large, anthropomorphic pig – or more precisely, a person in a large pig costume, wearing a top hat and a vest. He bows to the audience a few times and a young girl flounces onto the stage, dancing around the pig and then sitting at the table, putting a box on the table and starting to pull items out, one by one, and set them on the table. The pig shows considerable interest, coming over to look over her shoulder, and she pushes him away. He returns with a handkerchief and kneels before her. She takes the handkerchief and throw it at him to signal refusal. This goes back and forth for a while until she suddenly pulls his vest off. The pig looks embarrassed, as if he is ashamed of being naked on stage, although of course the costume does not include any pig anatomy (and he didn’t have pants in the first place). She dances a jig of triumph and offers the pig one of two batons pulled from offstage, though the pig is busy knocking her box to the floor by grabbing the tablecloth in order to “cover up.” A stagehand removes the table as the pig finally consents to hold the baton. The girl and the pig do an odd little dance with their batons, more or less in time with one another. The dance ends with the girl holding the pig’s tail as they exit the stage. A final shot shows a close up of the pig mask, demonstrating its elaborate articulation, including a fully functional, and rather large, tongue.

I can honestly attest that this is the most impressive animal costume I’ve seen in a century film, and I’ve seen a few of them. In addition to sticking out its tongue, the pig can roll its eyes, pull back its lips in a smile, and wiggle its ears and nose. That’s almost on a level with the famous masks designed for “Planet of the Apes” sixty years later. It was obviously worth the effects budget from the point of view of this Vaudeville performer, whatever it made for the film maker. The question is why go to all that effort for such a bizarre and ultimately simplistic routine? The actual performance, as we see it, takes advantage of none of these abilities, we only see them in the close up, and I suspect that the performer wearing the mask couldn’t really do most of them without pulling his hands out of the arms of the pig, in order to manipulate wires in some other part of the costume, so I wonder how this even played on stage. At all events, the pig is undeniably creepy, at least to modern tastes, and has been described as “nightmare fuel” in at least one other blog. Definitely weird, and maybe only would work in France.

Director: Unknown

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Unknown

Run Time: 2 Min, 24 secs

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