Studio: Émile Reynaud, for the Théâtre Optique at the Musée Grévin, Paris
Short Synopsis
A wanderer comes into a country inn and orders a beer from the pretty waitress. She brings it, and while he sets about flirting with her the kitchen boy slips in behind him, drains the glass and vanishes. The wanderer, finding his glass empty and assuming he has drunk it, orders another. A second traveller arrives and the two men fall into an argument; while they quarrel the kitchen boy creeps back, empties the second glass and runs off. The traveller leaves, the wanderer turns back to his beer and finds it gone again. He calls the waitress, complains that he has paid for two beers and had none, and stalks out. The kitchen boy comes in, explains to the waitress what became of the two bocks, and the pair laugh at the departed customer and go off together.
Why It Matters
- It is one of the three Pantomimes Lumineuses that Reynaud showed at the Musée Grévin from 28 October 1892, the first animated pictures ever projected for a paying public, three years before the Lumière cinematograph; the figures were painted by hand on some 700 gelatine plates and projected by the Théâtre Optique with mirrors, and Gaston Paulin's score was the first music written for an animated film.
- The film itself is lost. Reynaud, ruined by the arrival of cinema, threw most of his bands into the Seine in 1910, and Un bon bock survives only in a few plates and in his notes; it is known from the programme description and from Pauvre Pierrot, the one pantomime that does survive. As an 1892 work it is in the public domain everywhere.
Notes and Trivia
- The title means "a good glass of beer"; a bock in Paris slang was a small beer.
- Reynaud's programme ran for eight years and was seen by about half a million people.
- See also: Pauvre Pierrot (1892).