I have been waiting for this set to arrive for a long, long time. Now that it is here, I can say without a doubt that it was well worth the wait and more. Although Edison, the Lumieres and others had been working on the development of movies before Gaumont was founded in 1896, no studio did more to help establish them. This 3 DVD set focuses on three of their production heads (one per disc) between 1897-1913. One of them, Louis Feuillade, is well known to today’s audiences thanks to the success of his silent serials FANTOMAS, LES VAMPIRES and JUDEX. The other two, Alice Guy and Leonce Perret, are hardly known at all especially Perret.
This set is invaluable in many ways. For me the primary reason is that it contains over 3 hours of material by Alice Guy (later Guy-Blache’). Guy was the first woman pioneer of cinema and the short films collected here show her to not only have command of the new medium, but a willingness to experiment as well. There are comedies, trick films, dramas, even attempts to introduce color and synchronized sound. For too long she has been relegated to footnote status due to the unavailability of her output but this set changes all that. One invaluable film shows her shooting a synchronized sound short allowing us a glimpse into turn-of-the-last century moviemaking.
The other real discovery here are the two films of Leonce Perret. He began as an actor and then took over production from Feuillade shortly before World War One while still managing to appear in many of Gaumont’s films including his own. THE MYSTERY OF THE ROCKS OF KODOR shows him using the new technology of movies to solve a crime. The full length feature THE CHILD OF PARIS from 1913 is as good if not better than any film I’ve seen from that time period. I’m astonished that in all my years of watching and reading about silent films, I don’t recall ever having heard of Perret. I’m delighted to have that oversight corrected.
Although this set will be of primary interest to people interested in the history of film, others shouldn’t have too bad a time of it as most of the material is comic and the music performed with it is highly appropriate. The visual quality of almost everything on display here is truly astonishing. The material was gathered from several different archives and the restoration work makes it look as if it had just been developed. We’re talking films that are almost 100 years old and more so that is really saying something. First class in every regard, GAUMONT TREASURES belongs on the film historian’s shelf right next to Kino’s EDISON set. Between the two you can have an ideal history of the birth of cinema as we know it.
The Capsule Critic 