In 1906 Pathé Frères underwent remarkable expansion, producing 236 films of all kinds, some of significant distinction. Scenes and dramatic subjects increased from the 18 of the previous year to 42, while the scènes comiques achieved the record figure of 126. Charles Pathé already had in mind the rental system, on the American pattern, which he was to inaugurate in 1907. In Paris and in the provinces permanent theatres were rapidly being established, attracting a new public, at first drawn from the middle classes, and then from the great bourgeoisie. The flowering of the firm made prodigious steps in extending its activities to other countries. Naturally the length of the films was destined progressively to increase, though in the preceding years quite long films had been seen, like the famous Au pays noir and La poule aux oeufs d’or. This programme and that presented offer a good representation of the activity of Pathé in 1906.

Henri Bousquet

Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ was produced by the Pathé Frères company between the end of 1906 and the first months of 1907. Directed by Lucien Nonguet under the supervision of Ferdinand Zecca – the best talents at Pathé – it benefited from the photographic effects of Segundo de Chomón, and is divided into four parts: Birth of Jesus, Childhood of Jesus, Mir- acles and Public Life, Passion and Death. Of particular fascination, and a sign of the prestige of the production, is the use of colour. The Pathécolor system, in which the colour is automatically applied to the positive film with the use of special stencils, produces results of extraordinary precision.

Sightseeing and travelling

Films which have a different rhythm appear with surprising frequency, along with the more typical “prises de vue” filmed in every corner of the earth, from nearby Paris or Rome, to the Far East; these films which have clear characteristics and mechanisms are more easily classified into a genre. The former are more about excursions rather than travels, which perhaps by means of “tourists” narratively conduct to a suggestion of a theme, or such for the same purpose (rivers or places nearby and well-known). Are they narrative or structures of a genre with its own particular characteristics?

And this strange overabundance of rivers, an indication of a real “topos” of the performance, or more simply an occasion to make use of natural travelling, the reflection of the water on which to play – as frequently happens – with the stencilling continually doubled? Or rather a river as one of the typical places for a family excursion, on a Sunday, with a rowing-boat or a boat, as a place for a private experience, perhaps habitual (or habitually dreamed of) to a public who, in reality have only recently been given the means to escape from the city, by train, by tram, by bicycle or by boat?

Robert Desnos on documentary cinema

“Cinema was one of the first forms of expression of mechanical poetry. All of that, which the admirable Musée de Arts et Métiers shows us in a catalytic state, reveals itself animated by a mysterious movement in the Documentaries La Scierie en Suede or La Fromagerie d’Auvergne, all the more so when the end of these films is not discovered. The monotonous and fantastic hummings and hawings of pistons, the movement of rods, the revolving of wheels and shuttlecocks -a new sense of mystery is born from all of these: those today who claim to discover mechanical beauty remain completely excluded from this mystery. I am always sorry to find in a film (as in those of Jean Epstein for example) the vulgarisation of those spectacles which were once derided by the people who are now actually making use of them. However, documentary cinema does not limit itself to the recording of the modern movement of the machine . In fact the Lumière brothers filmed the arrival of a train in a station, and then they themselves or their students boarded the train, looked out of the window and took to recording the circular flow of the panorama. And so we had the travel films. From there the universe passes. From The Niagara Falls to The Jungles of Zambèze to The Top of The Himalayas, the seated spectator carries his desires and his indifference around. Maybe it is correct to say that cinema has in fact killed local colour. Rural films, exotic films, historical films -the viewer no longer finds interest in local material. He/She who takes the boat in person will not feel countryless at the landing-stage. Certain habits and costumes will not surprise the precisely documented imagination.

A generator of disappointments, the cinema, having cast a cold eye inside volcanoes, now turns itself towards the traditional lairs of dream. The Vieux-Colombier will project a splendid film on marine profundity. Immediately after, it will present us with a film without precedent dedicated to the stars. Perhaps this time the imagination will be allowed to win?

That is: the imagination which does not know either the liquid barrier of the great oceanic cavities or the insurmountable space of the ether. Here at least the comparison will always turn in favour of the spirit”. (Robert Desnos, Journal littéraire, 9th May 1925)