After the Ball (1897 film)

After the Ball (French: Après le bal) is an 1897 French short silent film made by Georges Méliès. It was sold by Méliès's Star Film Company and numbered 128 in its catalogues.[1]

This article is about the 1897 film. For other uses (including other films with this title), see After the Ball (disambiguation).
After the Ball
Scene from the film
Directed byGeorges Méliès
Produced byStar Film Company
StarringJehanne d'Alcy
Jane Brady
Release date
1897
Running time
Short
CountryFrance
LanguageSilent film

Plot

A maidservant helps her lady get undressed (with nudity simulated by a bodystocking). The maid helps the woman bathe, pouring water over her, and finally covers and dries her with a robe.

Production

Méliès was not the first filmmaker to include simulated nudity in a film; Eugène Pirou had already made a film along the same lines in late 1896, Le Bain de la Parisienne. (Méliès's film is sometimes also known by this title.)[2] Henri Joly, who made films for Charles Pathé, is believed to have filmed similarly racy subjects as early as 1895.[3] In Méliès's version, Jehanne d'Alcy is the bather, with Jane Brady, a music hall actress, as the chambermaid.[2]

Méliès, d'Alcy, and Brady made After the Ball outdoors, with the backdrop spread on a peach-garden wall (a mur à pêches) on the Méliès family property. Méliès's first glass studio had already been built, but was not quite ready to use as the walls were still being reinforced. According to d'Alcy's recollections, as reported to her granddaughter Madeleine Malthête-Méliès, dark sand stood in for the "water" because d'Alcy was cold in her body stocking.[2]

References
  1. Malthête, Jacques; Mannoni, Laurent (2008), L'oeuvre de Georges Méliès, Paris: Éditions de La Martinière, p. 338, ISBN 9782732437323
  2. Essai 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, p. 55, ISBN 2903053073, OCLC 10506429
  3. Frazer, John (1979), Artificially Arranged Scenes: The Films of Georges Méliès, Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., p. 64, ISBN 0816183686
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