The Enchanted Pond
About The Enchanted Pond
At the edge of a pond, a magician played by Julienne Mathieu brings on six naiads and five satyrs. She makes them appear and vanish in the splashes, or behind a cloth hung in front of the water. The pond boils and smokes.
Cast & crew
More about The Enchanted Pond
Segundo de Chomón directed for Pathé Frères. The French title is L'Étang enchanté. Julienne Mathieu plays the magician. It was shot outdoors, unlike most of Georges Méliès's trick films of the same years. What circulates is a Pathé-Baby home-cinema excerpt, tinted green, of about a minute and a half. A French catalogue gives 60 metres.
Themes
Making
Chomón set the substitutions at a real pond, so the splashes could hide the entrances.
Look
Shot outdoors. Appearances are timed to splashes and to a cloth held up in front of the water. The surviving print is tinted green.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
The full 1907 release is not the copy in circulation. A green-tinted Pathé-Baby fragment of 1 minute 37 seconds is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- The surviving piece is a Pathé-Baby reduction sold for home projectors in the 1920s, not the full 1907 release.
- The Wikimedia file runs 1 minute 37 seconds and is labeled a fragment.
- Mathieu again runs the trick herself, as she does in En avant la musique the same year.
- The print is tinted green.
- French lists also use the English title Enchanted Pond and the German Der verzauberte Teich.
Scenes
- Mathieu makes the naiads rise out of the splashes.
- Figures vanish behind a sheet while the pond steams.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (L'etang enchante (fragment, 1907).ogv)
