For the opening of the Caffè Pathé, adjacent to the Modernissimo Cinema, the Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé Foundation explored the many facets of this popular pre-war film setting. Whether losing your soul or falling in love, the café is a prime spot for all kinds of encounters, for people from middle-schoolers to hoodlums, from the bourgeois set to seducers. © Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé 22 This selection of five short fiction films from the Foundation’s collections, predating WWI, presents works in varying states of preservation, while sharing one thing in common: a scene set in a café, tavern or bar. At times shot outdoors on location, at others filmed in painted sets, we witness Max Linder’s drunken cinema début (Première sortie d’un collégien, 1905), the mad dash of burglars chased by a pack of dogs in a colourised flick by Lucien Nonguet (Les Chiens policiers, 1907), impromptu performances of the cake-walk, a mid-19th century dance that emerged from the plantations of the American South, introduced to France in 1902 (Le Cake-walk forcé, 1907), an Apache dance performed by Polaire and Gaston Silvestre (La Tournée des grandsducs, 1910) and a humorous sketch of the adventures of Jobard, a character incarnated by Lucien Cazalis for ÉmileCohl’s camera (Jobard est demandé en mariage, 1911). Is serving drinks in a café a national sport in France? To answer the question, the programme closes with La Course des garçons de café, a race that requires both athleticism and dexterity, created in the late 1920s, and filmed in a 1949 newsreel from the Pathé collections. The films are from the collections of the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé and Pathé Films, digitised by Gaumont Pathé Archives.

Photo © Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé