Short Synopsis
Pierrot climbs to Colombine's window at night to serenade her and win her over. Harlequin, his rival, appears and turns the courtship into open conflict, mocking Pierrot's attempt and staking his own claim on Colombine. The two men fight over her attention, and the encounter ends with Pierrot beaten and left alone outside, his serenade abandoned and his rival left in command of the scene. Reynaud tells the whole story through Théâtre Optique picture bands of hand-painted images, projected in sequence and timed live to Gaston Paulin's piano accompaniment during the screening.
Why It Matters
- Reynaud stages the love-triangle brawl with real stage-comedy timing and pantomime posing, not a novelty loop: the figures react to each other and to the fight, showing drawn characters could carry an actual comic scene years before cel animation existed.
- It was part of Pantomimes Lumineuses, one of the first programs of animated images publicly projected to a paying audience, using perforated picture bands that historians credit as an early instance of film perforation itself.
Notes and Trivia
- Reynaud hand-painted roughly 500 images directly onto the picture band for the film rather than photographing separate drawings, a process distinct from the cel and photographic techniques that would later define studio animation.
- Reynaud operated the Théâtre Optique himself during each screening, manually running the picture band in sync with the live piano.
- See also: Un Bon Bock and Le Clown et ses Chiens, the other two films shown alongside Pauvre Pierrot in the original Théâtre Optique program at the Musée Grévin.