The Woes of Roller Skaters,[1] also known as The Woes of Roller Skates,[2] is a 1908 French short silent comedy film directed by Georges Méliès.
Production
The Woes of Roller Skaters was apparently inspired by a 1905 or 1906 film by Pathé Frères, featuring a character very similar to the exaggeratedly obese man in this film.[3] Méliès appears in the film as the passerby attacked by "Apaches" at the end. The actor Bruneval plays the commissioner of police, with Méliès's set painter Claudel as one of the police officers. Fernande Albany plays one of the ladies.[3]
Themes
The film is one of several Méliès works in which spectators watching movement begin unintentionally to imitate it: in this case, a cancan and then a roller skating act.[2] Like Méliès's 1905 comedy The Scheming Gambler's Paradise, the film parodies the police by showing them making their own comical use of confiscated objects.[3]
Release
The film was released by Méliès's Star Film Company, and is numbered 1227–1232 in its American catalogues. (There was no known French release of the film.)[1] It was registered for American copyright at the Library of Congress on 21 July 1908.[1]
References
^ abcMalthête, Jacques; Mannoni, Laurent (2008), L'oeuvre de Georges Méliès, Paris: Éditions de La Martinière, p. 354, ISBN9782732437323
^ abcEssai de reconstitution du catalogue français de la Star-Film; suivi d'une analyse catalographique des films de Georges Méliès recensés en France, Bois d'Arcy: Service des archives du film du Centre national de la cinématographie, 1981, pp. 313–14, ISBN2903053073, OCLC10506429
