the long and short of it
by
Douglas Messerli
Adrien Barrère (director?) Tom Pouce suit une femme (Tom Thumb in Love) a.k.a. Mary Long and Tommy Short / 1910
The French film of 1910, Tom Pouce suit une femme, literally in English, “Tom Thumb Courts a Woman,” but titled variously in English as Tom Thumb in Love and Mary Long and Tommy Short, is perhaps better thought of as a cartoon with living beings as opposed to describing it even as a comic one-reeler.
Indeed, the theater poster for this 3
minute work perfectly captures the nature of the film in which we first observe
the little person, Tom (actor unknown) is seen following the tall transvestite
(whose name also remains unknown) who is obviously highly displeased by his
attentions, as she turns several times in an attempt to rid herself of his
attentions.
When she finally enters her apartment
building, he turns to the camera undeterred by her rejections, effectively
expressing his sentiments that she is just his kind of girl.
Without any difficulties, he suddenly
appears in her kitchen where he obviously spiels a series of loving compliments
about her beauty to which she quickly succumbs, if only momentarily. She bats
her large eyes and nearly swoons with pleasure.
But this is the type of woman who doesn’t
sit for long, as she soon stands and goes about her business, joyfully
interacting with his continued attempts to woo her with long legged-kicks and
awkward flourishes of her arms, most of which hit home with the small courtier
who is knocked to the floor on numerous occasions.
While Tom continues to spout sweet pleasantries,
“Mary” increasingly grows impatient, kicking and hitting her suitor with
greater frequency as he again cowers under the table and, at one point, escapes
the apartment, only to miraculously return.
Finally, determining to have no more of his apparently
inane appreciations she pulls him atop her table, wraps him up in the tablecloth
and deposits Tom like a piece of garbage out the window.
We see Tom below on the street, having
survived the fall, brushing himself off and puffing himself up with renewed
dignity, briskly walking off.
The
camera returns to the kitchen where we observe the harridan finally sitting, as
she almost literally laughs “her head off.”
Although this film is attributed to A.
Barrere, he may have contributed only the cinema poster. Adrien Barrère (1874-1931)
was well known throughout the Belle Époque as a poster artist and painter, who
collaborated several times with the Pathé brothers film studio—who made this
film—including a famed poster, “Tous y mènent leurs efants.” In a 1912 issue of
Le Courrier Cinématographique he was described as “Pathé's man of the
hour and designer of more than two hundred posters of unfettered verve and
imagination.” It could well be that his poster generated the idea for the film
while someone else connected to the studio actualized it.
Los Angeles, December 9, 2020
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (December
2020).
No comments:
Post a Comment