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| Festival Year |
Festival Section |
| 2012 |
Early Cinema |
| Film Title |
[NOUVELLES LUTTES EXTRAVAGANTES] |
| Alternative Title 1 |
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| Alternative Title 2 |
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| Alternative Title 3 |
|
| Country |
France |
| Release Date |
1900 |
| Production Co. |
Georges Méliès |
| Director |
Georges Méliès |
| Format |
|
Speed (fps) |
| 35mm |
|
16 |
| |
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|
| Footage |
|
Time |
| c.15 m. |
|
c. 1' |
| Archive Source |
Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Torino |
| |
|
| Print Notes |
col. (imbibito/tinted)
Senza didascalie / No intertitles.
|
| Other Information |
| (copia depositata dal collezionista/print deposited by the collector Fabrizio Pangrazi; preservazione/preserved 2012). |
| |
| Program Notes |
This film, identified by Carlo Montanaro, closely resembles Méliès’ 1900 film Nouvelles luttes e-xtravagantes (Fat and Lean Wrestling Match, catalogue Nº 309-310, originally 50 m. in length). The painted background is almost the same, as are some of the performers; and the “attractions” of the film, comic wrestling enriched with optical tricks, are similar; but the action only partially cor-responds: the female battle present at the beginning of the Pangrazi copy is absent from Nouvelle luttes extravagantes, while the central segment is similar to the version already known. Various details show that these are two different takes, for instance, the drape lying on the wall is in a dif-ferent position and has a different pattern. Moreover, in the final section of Nouvelles luttes extra-vagantes, the fight between the small man and the gigantic man has no equivalent in the Pangrazi copy.
An early hypothesis was that the film might be the lost Luttes extravagantes of 1899 (Nº 180 in the Star Film catalogue). After consultation with Marie-Hélène Méliès the more likely explanation was that this was a kind of “second take” or “second version” of Nouvelles luttes extravagantes, for some reason used and distributed at a later time and never included in the catalogue. Until now the existence of this variant was unknown. Perhaps it comes from a second “safety” negative, but in any case it represents a “fuori catalogo” to enrich the already recorded Méliès filmography.
One of the two protagonists has been identified as Jeanne (or Jehanne) D’Alcy (1865-1956), who was to become the mistress of Méliès, and from 1925 his wife. – Claudia Gianetto
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