Josef Sváb-Malostranský

Ferdinand Gýra

Josef Sváb-Malostranský unrolls a poster in front of a mill with the words Czech Cinematograph. All the actors in the film gather around him. An old philanderer meets up with the miller&apos;s wife in front of the mill. He is about to ...

Jan Krízenecký

Dostavenícko ve mlýnici

Courtship Comedy Czechoslovakian Style

It didn&apos;t take much time for cinema to develop its own genres. The proto-documentary actuality film and the prank-punitive comedy may be traced back to the first Lumière Cinématographe screening. From the latter, a sort of subgenre emerged of courtship comedies, with R. W. Paul and Alfred Moul&apos;s &quot;The Soldier&apos;s Courtship&quot; (1896) usually being credited as the first and which Paul remade the same year as this film as &quot;Tommy Atkins in the Park&quot; (1898). Perhaps, evidence of the genre&apos;s popularity in early cinema is best exemplified by its appearance in the films-within-the-film of &quot;The Countryman and the Cinematograph&quot; (1901), as well as its American rip-off &quot;Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show&quot; (1902). It&apos;s one of three types of films in those mise-en-abymes along with the popular subjects of dancing girls and approaching trains.

The courtship comedy works along the same lines as the prank-punitive formula except it&apos;s more specific, as the prank is a man kissing an unfaithful woman and this being discovered by the husband, resulting in the punitive comedic violence of these pictures. Notable is how this formula relies on sight, that of the characters much as the film&apos;s effectiveness rests on that of the spectator. Another interesting thing about this particular courtship comedy made by Czechoslovakia&apos;s first filmmaker and exhibitor, Jan Krízenecký, is that it features what appears to be an advertisement for projected motion-picture exhibition, as the man and others carry out a sign in one shot before the film jump cuts to the courtship comedy. Although, the film was reportedly preserved from two separate prints, so the jump cut may instead only reflect missing footage in the middle from that splicing back together--I don&apos;t know. As it is, it&apos;s an unusual bit of editing for a non-trick, nor actuality, film from the period. Paul&apos;s &quot;Come Along Do!&quot; of the same year, for instance, is often credited as the first fiction film to feature two spatially distinct scenes. I suppose it&apos;s less remarkable for its time in its breaking-the-fourth wall direct address to the spectator in advertising cinema, as early cinema is all about this sort of &quot;cinema of attractions&quot; over the later narrative film.

Further demonstrating how solidified genres already were in early cinema, the other two 1898 relative fiction films from Krízenecký included on the Czech National Film Archive home video were also popular film subjects at the time. One is more of a broad punitive-prank film also involving the same advertisement, but which is incorporated into its embryonic plot, as opposed to standing outside of it as here. The other film is a facial-expression comedy where an actor is filmed in close-up making faces.

See my review for &quot;Svatojanská pout&apos; ceskoslovanské vesnici&quot; (&quot;Midsummer Pilgrimage in a Czechoslavic Village&quot;) regarding Krízenecký&apos;s early actuality films.

It didn't take much time for cinema to develop its own genres. The proto-documentary actuality film and the prank-punitive comedy may be traced back to the first Lumière Cinématographe screening. From the latter, a sort of subgenre emerged of courtship comedies, with R. W. Paul and Alfred Moul's "The Soldier's Courtship" (1896) usually being credited as the first and which Paul remade the same year as this film as "Tommy Atkins in the Park" (1898). Perhaps, evidence of the genre's popularity in early cinema is best exemplified by its appearance in the films-within-the-film of "The Countryman and the Cinematograph" (1901), as well as its American rip-off "Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show" (1902). It's one of three types of films in those mise-en-abymes along with the popular subjects of dancing girls and approaching trains.

The courtship comedy works along the same lines as the prank-punitive formula except it's more specific, as the prank is a man kissing an unfaithful woman and this being discovered by the husband, resulting in the punitive comedic violence of these pictures. Notable is how this formula relies on sight, that of the characters much as the film's effectiveness rests on that of the spectator. Another interesting thing about this particular courtship comedy made by Czechoslovakia's first filmmaker and exhibitor, Jan Krízenecký, is that it features what appears to be an advertisement for projected motion-picture exhibition, as the man and others carry out a sign in one shot before the film jump cuts to the courtship comedy. Although, the film was reportedly preserved from two separate prints, so the jump cut may instead only reflect missing footage in the middle from that splicing back together--I don't know. As it is, it's an unusual bit of editing for a non-trick, nor actuality, film from the period. Paul's "Come Along Do!" of the same year, for instance, is often credited as the first fiction film to feature two spatially distinct scenes. I suppose it's less remarkable for its time in its breaking-the-fourth wall direct address to the spectator in advertising cinema, as early cinema is all about this sort of "cinema of attractions" over the later narrative film.

Further demonstrating how solidified genres already were in early cinema, the other two 1898 relative fiction films from Krízenecký included on the Czech National Film Archive home video were also popular film subjects at the time. One is more of a broad punitive-prank film also involving the same advertisement, but which is incorporated into its embryonic plot, as opposed to standing outside of it as here. The other film is a facial-expression comedy where an actor is filmed in close-up making faces.

See my review for "Svatojanská pout' ceskoslovanské vesnici" ("Midsummer Pilgrimage in a Czechoslavic Village") regarding Krízenecký's early actuality films.

Josef Sváb-Malostranský unrolls a poster in front of a mill with the words Czech Cinematograph. All the actors in the film gather around him. An old philanderer meets up with the miller's wife in front of the mill. He is about to embrace her when her husband appears. The philanderer gets a good hiding.

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