Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy
About Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy
A smoker, played by Paul Panzer, falls asleep. Two fairies, one of them Gladys Hulette, play with his pipe. He wakes, finds them, and shuts them in a cigar box. He takes out a flower. A fairy is inside it, smoking a cigarette. The rest of the reel is the trick: matches and smoking gear move on their own, and the fairies stay small against giant props.
Cast & crew
More about Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy
J. Stuart Blackton produced and directed the Vitagraph trick short. Tony Gaudio photographed it, using mirrors for depth. Vitagraph released it on 10 August 1909. It runs 5 minutes. The effects use hidden wires, double exposures, oversized props, and smoke. Sweet Caporal cigarettes and cigars are placed in the scenes. Wikipedia calls that the first tobacco product placement in a movie. The moving matches are linked to Émile Cohl's The Animated Matches (1908).
Themes
Making
Gaudio and Blackton built the scale gags with giant props and mirrors so a fairy could stand on a table and still read as tiny.
Reviews
Frederick A. Talbot, in Moving Pictures: How They Are Made and Worked, calls Princess Nicotine one of the finest trick films made in the United States and spends pages on how the tricks were done.
Look
Tony Gaudio shot it with mirrors for a deep field, plus double exposure, wires, smoke, and props built far larger than the fairies.
Technique
Wires, double exposure, oversized props, smoke, and mirrors carry the fairies through the smoker's tabletop.
Preservation
In 2003 the Library of Congress placed it on the National Film Registry.
Notes
- Scientific American ran an article explaining how the tricks were done.
- Blackton had already made fake footage of the Spanish-American War and early animated films before this reel.
- The National Film Registry added it in 2003.
- Gladys Hulette is one of the two fairies. The other is uncredited in the standard cast list.
Scenes
- Panzer wakes, catches the fairies at his pipe, and shuts them in a cigar box.
- He lifts a flower out of the box and finds a fairy inside it, smoking.
Influenced by
- Émile Cohl's The Animated Matches (1908)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Princess Nicotine.ogv)
