"Autour d'une cabine" is Emile Reynaud's second surviving short film, made two years after "Pauve Pierrot" and is again animated. Yes, animated! Reynaud may have made only 4 animated movies in his whole lifetime, but this man made an amazing contribution to film long before J. Stuart Blackton came into the picture. His two movies are colorful and humorous and tell stories! Here, the story is simpler than "Pauve Pierrot" and features a man and woman playing tricks on each-other. After the woman finally gets the man to leave her alone she gets in the water with her other friend, they play and later get on a boat.
While this movie is shorter and far more simplistic than "Pauve Pierrot" (being only two minutes long when the latter was four, and there being no cutting closer to the figures) I think the animation looks better here. The part at the beginning in which a woman dives into the water looked excellent because it was more flowing and not jerky. In fact, the way the film is animated here is by dissolves, one figure dissolving away and shows up in a different spot. This isn't how animation is done today, but it appears to work better than the animation in "Pauve Pierrot" so I suppose it's a step up in that sense.
All in all, a must see if you're an animation buff. While primitive looking, it needs to be respected as one of the first animated movies and is worth a watch for that reason.
While this movie is shorter and far more simplistic than "Pauve Pierrot" (being only two minutes long when the latter was four, and there being no cutting closer to the figures) I think the animation looks better here. The part at the beginning in which a woman dives into the water looked excellent because it was more flowing and not jerky. In fact, the way the film is animated here is by dissolves, one figure dissolving away and shows up in a different spot. This isn't how animation is done today, but it appears to work better than the animation in "Pauve Pierrot" so I suppose it's a step up in that sense.
All in all, a must see if you're an animation buff. While primitive looking, it needs to be respected as one of the first animated movies and is worth a watch for that reason.