Comment les pauvres mangent Paris (1910)
Also known as How the Poor Eat in Paris
1910 · Silent film · 4 min
- Documentary
- Short
Synopsis
"How the Poor Dine in Paris," or "How the Poor Eat in Paris," is an early or proto-documentary from Pathé that documents just what it says: poor people shop for or retrieve food from, as the title cards indicate, "near the market hall, the cutlet seller, the leftovers from the large restaurants, and meals in the barracks." They're, then, shown eating the food, sometimes in inserted medium shots. The picture concludes with a title card reading, "He who sleeps forgets his hunger," and a supposed homeless man sleeping in two different places. All in 14 shots not counting title cards, there's also some basic continuity editing when following the homeless figure as he smells food from a kitchen and rounds a corner to drink some water before finding a shaded area to sleep. Oddly, considering the haunting final title card, he had just ate some bread, too, before going to sleep.This is the first film on the Edition Filmmuseum's two-disc set "Screening the Poor," which is quite a unique curation for its inclusion of films with magic lantern slide narratives--unique today, that is, as it more accurately reflects the multi-media presentations of early cinema exhibition. The first screened narrative in the set is actually of a magic lantern slide show. Like this film, it's included under the subsection of "Slumming." DVD notes explain this film's inclusion as, besides recording the poor, it being difficult to distinguish extras acting in the film from the real clochards. There's a tell…
Synopsis from OMDb
Details
- Released
- 1910-11-05
- Original title
- Comment les pauvres mangent à Paris
- Running time
- 4 minutes
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Silent Films, Feature Films