Le Coucher de la Mariée
| Le coucher de la mariée | |
|---|---|
The film | |
| Directed by | Léar (Albert Kirchner) |
| Produced by | Eugène Pirou |
| Starring | Louise Willy |
Release date |
|
Running time | 7 minutes (only 3 minutes survive) |
| Country | France |
| Language | Silent |
Le Coucher de la Mariée (Bedtime for the Bride or The Bridegroom's Dilemma) is a French erotic short film considered to be one of the first erotic films ever made.[1] The film was first screened in Paris in November 1896, within a year of the first public screening of a projected motion picture.[2] The film was produced by Eugène Pirou and directed by Albert Kirchner (under the pseudonym "Léar").[3] It features a risqué (for the time) striptease, but does not end in nudity.
Content
A newlywed couple is in front of their wedding-bed after their wedding. The husband goes into raptures in front of his new wife, who simpers. She then asks him to withdraw while she undresses and he puts a folding screen between them. She removes one by one the many layers of clothes she wears — a jacket, a dress, underskirts, sub-underskirts, and a blouse. The husband does not stay in place, sometimes mopping his brow, sometimes reading a newspaper, sometimes having lecherous looks above the folding screen. The actors send numerous glances towards the camera.
History of the movie
The original film has been estimated to be around seven minutes long,[1] but it had degraded to a poor condition in the French Film Archives until it was found in 1996. Only 3:46 minutes of the film have survived, which includes the undressing sequence.[4]
The film was shot in a theater set, and featured actress Louise Willy[5] who performs the striptease. It is the direct adaptation of a theater show with the same name and the same cast. The show was very popular[6] at the time, at Olympia Theater (Paris). It was a pantomime, quite risqué, but still not explicit as the actress was not nude. However, because only less than four minutes have survived from the original seven minutes, it is impossible to see more than the striptease.
Legacy
There were several imitators that followed, such as Le Coucher de la mariée ou Triste nuit de noces (1899).
Pathé produced at least 4 different versions of the film between 1897 to 1907, including two also with Louise Willy.[7]
Despite its tame (by modern standards) content, the film has in modern times been described (perhaps facetiously) as a "blue movie",[1] "porn",[1] a "stag film",[1] and Pirou as the inventor thereof.[1]
See also
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Phil De Semlyen. "Film Studies 101: The A-Z of the birth of cinema". Empire. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 31 May 2015.
U
This quotation is the entire relevant section, although only a small portion of the entire article.
Undressing
Approximately 20 minutes after film was born someone invented the blue movie, kicking off a surrepticious parallel film industry and setting the humble German plumber on the path to sex god status. That someone may well have been still photographer Eugène Pirou - yes, porn was invented by a Frenchman - whose 1896 seven-minute stag film Le Coucher De La Mariée (Bedtime For The Bride) had stage performer Louise Willy showing a lot more than just ankle. Even notables like Charles Pathé and Georges Méliès (Méliès' wife would appear in as a maid in an 1897 skin flick) were soon muscling in with striptease flicks of their own, although censorship would put pay to that in 1911. A 1910 German film called Am Abend - yes, hardcore was invented by a German - introduced specialist audiences to things we can't even describe here for fear our mum might read this. - ↑ Ramsaye, Terry (1926), A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture Through 1926, Simon and Schuster Essandess paperback reprint, 1964, Location at Broadway and Thirty-Fourth: p. 117; 20-foot screen and gilded frame, p. 232
- ↑ Le coucher de la mariée: pantomime en un acte. Paris: E. Fromont, 1895
- ↑ Alex Duval Smith (13 November 1996). "Tremendous amount of prudishness' over porn, says journalist". London Observer Service. Archived from the original on 12 June 2018. Retrieved 1 June 2015 – via Newspapers.com
. - ↑ Richard Abel, Encyclopedia of early cinema Archived 3 April 2023 at the Wayback Machine, Taylor & Francis, 2005, ISBN 978-0-415-23440-5, p. 518
- ↑ Dubé, Paul; Marchioro, Jacques. "Les frères Isola – Souvenirs". dutempsdescerisesauxfeuillesmortes.net (in French). Archived from the original on 16 August 2016. Retrieved 7 July 2016.
- ↑ "Le Coucher de la mariée (Eugène Pirou, 1896) à voir en ligne sur HENRI, la plateforme des collections films de la Cinémathèque française". www.cinematheque.fr (in French). Archived from the original on 31 May 2026. Retrieved 31 May 2026.