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Poster for Création de la Serpentine (1908)

Création de la Serpentine (1908)

Also known as Beginning of the Serpentine Dance

1908 · Silent film · 5 min · dir. Segundo de Chomón

  • silent film
  • dance film

Synopsis

In this beautifully colored picture we see a dancing master in his studio playing the violin and giving instructions to a number of beautiful maidens. They go through a minuet, and suddenly their costumes change before our very eyes, seemingly without the aid of human hands. A fellow enters, and is very much interested in the dancing lesson, but casts a spell over the group, and instantly we see them disappear into space. The visitor is then transformed into Mephistopheles and takes the dancing…

Synopsis from OMDb

Details

Director
Segundo de Chomón
Studio
Pathé Frères
Released
1908-09-03
Original title
Création de la serpentine
Running time
5 minutes

Cast & crew

Reviews on the Internet Archive

★★★ · Max Linder · zigoto · 2017-04-04

More than a comedy or a dramatic film, the trick film depends on its visual appearance, without a sharp picture and especially without the colors, there is little left of what viewers in 1908 found praiseworthy: "The figures are so vivid and natural that they appear to be actually there, not mere pictures thrown on a screen" (MPW, Jan. 23, 1909). At least it has Max Linder, "the Motion Picture's first truly international Star", in it.

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