Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Boireau, bonhomme de pain d'épice / [The Gingerbread Man]

THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF NORWAY / GEORGE EASTMAN HOUSE FELLOWSHIP
BOIREAU, BONHOMME DE PAIN D'ÉPICE / [THE GINGERBREAD MAN] (Pathé Frères, F 1913)
    Dir: ?; cast: André Deed; incompleto / incomplete, 35mm, 582 ft., 10’ (16 fps), George Eastman House.
    Preserved in 2004 from a 16 mm acetate positive print.
    No intertitles.
    Grand piano: David Drazin.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fuori quadro, 12 Oct 2004.

Kelli Hicks (GCM): "André Deed’s Boireau character was among the first of Pathé’s series comics, and a consistent audience draw. This incomplete short begins with a plot typical of the Boireau films, but end with a surprisingly dark twist. In a series of slapstick missteps, Boireau, mistaken for an employee of a beauty salon, wreaks havoc on the salon’s well-to-do patrons. His over-enthusiastic attempts at escaping their wrath only create another case of mistaken identity for him, when he lands himself in a hot baker’s oven, becoming the unlikely victim of two charming, but very hungry young girls. Daniel Blazek, 2004 graduate of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, preserved this film via the 2004 Mo i Rana Fellowship, with the collaboration of the National Library of Norway." – Kelli Hicks (GCM)

AA: A catastrophe comedy in which Boireau first "wreaks havoc on the salon's well-to-do patrons" to quote Kelli Hicks and then falls into the hot baker's oven, turning into a gingerbread man, "piparkakkumies", eaten by two eager girls who tear him apart.

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