Loie Fuller (1902) User Reviews

One of MANY variations on the original "Serpentine Dance"

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 14 February 2014]

Starting in the mid-1890s with Anabelle Whitford's version for the Edison company, quite a few other filmed versions of the Serpentine Dance appeared over the next decade and a half. Loïe Fuller (who claimed to have originated the dance) made many of these--including a very famous one for the Lumière brothers and quite a few for the Spanish director Segundo de Chomón. "Loïe Fuller" is the first or one of the first performances by this famous dancer for Chomón.

Like most of the early Serpentine Dance films, this one is pretty straight-forward, as Fuller spins about while rhythmically moving her arms to make for an interesting effect. However, and this is important, it is not nearly as good as the earlier versions, nor does it add to the original concept such as when Chomón made "The Birth of the Serpentine Dance"--which had some actual plot and seemed to imply that Satan created the dance! Because the film isn't innovative in the least, I recommend you just see the Edison or Lumière versions--which are quite mesmerizing.

The films Loïe Fuller never made

[kekseksa · 8 January 2020]

American-born Paris dancer Loïe Fuller was one of the most celebrated dancers of the period and, until the emergence of her protégée Isadora Duncan, the most important figure in "modern dance". She most certainly creatid the Serpentine Dance in 1893 but she also wrote an autobiography and does not say a word about ever making a film. The film companies all reproduced her dance with other dancers, occasionally hinting that it really was Fuller in the film but none of the films genuinely feature her. Pathé entiled the film Loïe Fuller but never actually claimed that it was her.

More Serpentine Dancing

[Tornado_Sam · 7 February 2018]

We've gotten accustomed to seeing serpentine dances in these early years of cinema. Beginning with Edison, there was no end to filming dances (and not just serpentine dances; there were also belly dances, if you check out Edison "Fatima" and Chomón's "Danse de Ouled-Naid"). This film is one of Chomón's earliest efforts--he was much more active in 1907 and 1908. It's a blend of a trick film and a serpentine dance film*, and according to Wikipedia, several prints of it were stencil-colored. The surviving print is B & W, but the colored print probably looked pretty.good.

The film begins with a bat transforming into Loie Fuller, who, in her robes, performs her dance. It's an okay show and while it runs on longer than it should it didn't bore me. It was pretty much the same thing throughout, but was very hypnotic and rhythmic Not anything special but people into these movies should enjoy it for what it is. I only wish a stencil-colored copy had survived, because it would've been even better.

*The filmmaker Georges Méliès created a film in 1899, called "The Pillar of Fire"--which is similar as it has a serpentine dance as well as a couple trick effects.