The Tulips (1907) User Reviews

Well, at least it had nice colors.

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 15 February 2014]

"The Tulips" is not one of director Segundo de Chomón's better efforts. Here the movie seems to be all about the flowery sets and tricks instead of telling a decent story. And, even if the film came out in 1907, it seemed a bit dated for that time.

The plot isn't really comprehensible. Some folks stand by and watch with a flower-bordered screen as all sorts of tableaux appeared and disappeared. And, in the end, two of the onlookers climb inside a giant flower and disappear. In between there is some pointless dancing.

The only thing that stands out for me positively is the color. The Pathé Brothers pioneered the use of stencils--whereby assembly lines of ladies hand-painted color onto each cel of the film! Most of the cels in this one have multiple colors--which is quite striking and quite unusual. It looks pretty but other than that, it doesn't amount to very much other than a few ordinary (for the time) camera tricks.

tulips? irises? satyrs? fauns? a mystery

[kekseksa · 22 June 2018]

People's knowledge of horticulture seems to be sadly deficient. All the films that purport to be this title are remarkable for the complete absence of tulips and the mystery is how so many people have watched this film and imagined that they could see them. Obviously they did not grow up in Holland. Except - horror of horrors - the EYE archive has just (at the time of writing) uploaded yet another version with the same ascription. Obviously their archivist did grow up in Holland, so must I assume be blind.

Nor does the film match he catalogue description that describes how a boy and girl produced tulips each of which has a human being inside..

The flowers one sees in this film are irises but, unfortunately, this is not the Pathé film L'Iris fantastique (1912) of which can also find a copy on the internet (wrongly dated 1908) which fits the catalogue description for that film.

To complicate matters, elsewhere one finds exactly the same film in a somewhat more abbreviated version identified as Le Faune (1908) of Gaston Velle but frankly it does not fit the catalogue description of this film either.

There is also a Parnaland (future Éclair) film of 1906 called Faune et bacchantes.. In this film the bacchantes are said to tease the "buste" of a faun (but it is marble) and douse it with water from a fountain but the dance is then performed with the faun who comes to life and there are only five dancers not seven as here. It is clear however that this is broadly the same story.

Mentioned in neither the description of Le Faune (which talks of a god playing music) nor that of Faune et bacchantes (nor indeed in the that of Les Tulipes) is the little chap in the tricorne who appears in this film.....presumably a bacchante-fancying landlord who thinks he's goat enough to rival the faun.

So the identity of this film remains a bit of a mystery but it is certainly not Les Tulipes and it is probably not Le Faune either!

My best guess is that it is the film Il Fauno (1907) made by Gaston Velle for the Italian company Cines (largely ripped off from the Parnaland). Gaston Velle's desertion of Pathé and his subsequent return (in 1907-8) caused a great row although it was in fact Cines that accused Pathé of plagiarism. So this may even be a 1907 Pathé dupe of the Italian film (with Velle later making a different, slightly longer and more elaborate version for Pathé in 1908).