Beginning of the Serpentine Dance
About Beginning of the Serpentine Dance
In a living room, Max Linder plays the violin while four couples waltz. They start a minuet and their clothes change at once. A visitor casts a spell. The room empties. He turns into a devil, takes the violinist to hell, and pulls a length of silk from a cauldron. A woman in the silk dances the serpentine. Other women join her. They vanish in bursts of flame. The French title is Création de la serpentine.
Cast & crew
More about Beginning of the Serpentine Dance
Segundo de Chomón directed, wrote, and photographed the trick film for Pathé. Wikidata and a Las Palmas festival listing time it at 5 minutes. EOFFTV lists 2 minutes. Databases bill Loïe Fuller as the serpentine dancer and Linder as the violinist or dance teacher. The American title is Beginning of the Serpentine Dance.
Themes
Making
Chomón uses a costume change on the cut, a disappearance, and a devil who manufactures the dancer out of a cauldron. The serpentine itself is the silk, not a separate story.
Look
Chomón shot the room, the hell set, and the silk. Substitution changes the couples' clothes and removes the room when the visitor gestures.
Technique
The clothes change, the empty room, and the woman drawn out of the silk are stop-substitution tricks, finished with bursts of flame.
Preservation
Prints have been shown via Filmoteca de Catalunya and EYE. Copies are on the Internet Archive and Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- The dance the title names is the stage serpentine associated with Loïe Fuller, who is billed on several modern credit lists.
- A festival note says prints have been shown from Filmoteca de Catalunya and EYE Filmmuseum.
- One listing calls the surviving material a color file.
- An Internet Archive identifier is CrationDeLaSerpentine, missing the first e.
- A Commons file uses the French title.
Scenes
- The couples' clothes change the moment the minuet starts.
- The devil draws a length of silk from the cauldron and a woman dances out of it.
- The dancers go up in bursts of flame.
Influenced by
- Loïe Fuller's serpentine dance
Also available
- Internet Archive (CrationDeLaSerpentine)
- Wikimedia Commons (Création de la Serpentine (1908).webm)
