Included under the "slumming" section of Edition Filmmuseum's two-disc set "Screening the Poor," "Seeing the Real Thing," otherwise known as "The Grand Duke's Tour," subverts the bourgeois gaze of the prior two films in the collection, especially "Two Violinists" (1911), which was also a mistaken-identity farce, but there it was about upper-class women slumming by busking. Here, the con is a gin cellar that attracts bon viveurs, who are led to believe they're watching a love triangle play out between apaches and a gigolette. After a bit of dancing, the situation quickly escalates into a shootout, including a supposed policeman. The bon viveurs flee the scene, although, importantly, not before settling their bill. Reflexively, like film itself, the spectacle was entirely an act, as the gin cellar's performers go back to taking a break, awaiting their next customer, or mark.
(From Cinémathèque Française 35mm nitrate print restoration)
