Miseries of the Needle
About Miseries of the Needle
Louise, a seamstress newly in Paris, is taken in by the workers of a lingerie cooperative called L'Entraide. In the shop her boss tries to assault her. She slaps him and is left with piecework, a child, and no money. She walks to the river with the child and is about to jump, then stops. The finish plays The Internationale and asks the audience to organize.
Cast & crew
More about Miseries of the Needle
Anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists founded Le Cinéma du Peuple in October 1913. This was its first film. Raphaël Clamour directed, with Armand Guerra, a former Éclair employee, as cinematographer and co-director. Musidora, whom Clamour knew from the Paris stage, plays Louise in her first film role. It was shown on January 18, 1914, at the Salle des Sociétés Savantes on rue Danton. Charles Marck of the CGT lectured the pictures, and the writer Lucien Descaves spoke.
Themes
Background
The cooperative formed in October 1913 and opened this film three months later, the winter before France entered the war.
In film history
Historians who revived the Cinéma du Peuple titles treat this as an early feminist film because the plot is about a woman worker, a sexual threat from a boss, and a call to organize.
Making
Guerra had been at Éclair. The production was a short-lived propaganda company, not a commercial studio picture, and the premiere was a political meeting as much as a screening.
Look
Armand Guerra shot it at the Lux studios. The 2020 scan comes from an unassembled nitrate negative, so the surviving order is a reconstruction.
Preservation
An incomplete nitrate negative, 272 meters, was digitized by the Cinémathèque française in 2020. Titles are missing. A stray fragment of another film sits at the end of the scan.
Notes
- The Cinémathèque française digitized an incomplete nitrate negative in 2020 at the CNC labs: 272 meters, without titles.
- That scan runs 14 minutes 53 seconds and keeps, after 14:13, a fragment of a different unidentified film.
- Lina Clamour, Raphaël Clamour, and Armand Guerra also appear.
- French Wikipedia gives the length as 13 minutes.
- The cooperative's own statement said it wanted subjects from work and daily life instead of the films usually shown to working audiences.
- Germaine Dulac's La Souriante Madame Beudet came eight years later.
Scenes
- Louise slaps the boss who tries to assault her.
- She stands at the river with her child and does not jump.
- The ending turns to The Internationale and a direct appeal to organize.