''Nouvelles Luttes extravagantes'', known in English as ''Fat and Lean Wrestling Match'' and as ''The Wrestling Sextette'', is a 1900 French silent trick film directed by

Georges Méliès Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès (; ; 8 December 1861 – 21 January 1938) was a French illusionist, actor, and film director. He led many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. Méliès was well known for the use of ...

Plot

On a wrestling mat, two women change magically out of wrestling outfits into street clothes, and then change into male wrestlers, who pummel each other exaggeratedly. One of them takes the other apart, then reassembles him. The women reappear and all four wrestlers take a bow. Two more wrestlers enter, a hefty man and a slim man. The hefty one flattens the other like a pancake and rolls him up, but the thin man comes back to life and the wrestling resumes. The hefty man is blown apart, but his limbs magically return to his torso and all is well.

Production

As wrestling was a common carnival attraction in turn-of-the-century France, it was a topic of special interest to the fairground exhibitors to whom Méliès marketed his films. Méliès found opportunity to parody such wrestling bouts multiple times, with ''Nouvelles Luttes extravagantes'' a notable example. Méliès had previously played with the theme of a body being taken apart and reassembled in "The Recalcitrant Decapitated Man," a successful stage illusion at the

Théâtre Robert-Houdin The Théâtre Robert-Houdin, initially advertised as the Théâtre des Soirées Fantastiques de Robert-Houdin, was a Paris theatre dedicated primarily to the performance of stage illusions. Founded by the famous magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin ...

. The backdrop for the film suggests a setting near the

Bosphorus The Bosporus Strait (; grc, Βόσπορος ; tr, İstanbul Boğazı 'Istanbul strait', colloquially ''Boğaz'') or Bosphorus Strait is a natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in Istanbul in northwestern Tu ...

. Special effects used in the film include

pyrotechnics Pyrotechnics is the science and craft of creating such things as fireworks, safety matches, oxygen candles, explosive bolts and other fasteners, parts of automotive airbags, as well as gas-pressure blasting in mining, quarrying, and demolition. ...

, mannequins, black wires put on the ground to manipulate the detached parts of the body, and

substitution splice The substitution splice or stop trick is a cinematic special effect in which filmmakers achieve an appearance, disappearance, or transformation by altering one or more selected aspects of the mise-en-scène between two shots while maintaining th ...

s. The smaller of the two female wrestlers is played by

Jehanne d'Alcy Charlotte Lucie Marie Adèle Stephanie Adrienne Faës (20 March 1865 – 14 October 1956), known by her stage name Jeanne d'Alcy or Jehanne d'Alcy, was a French film actress. Biography D'Alcy had achieved success in theatrical productions by 1 ...

Release and reception

''Nouvelles Luttes extravagantes'' was sold by Méliès's

Star Film Company The Manufacture de films pour cinématographes, often known as Star Film, was a French film production company run by the illusionist and film director Georges Méliès. History On 28 December 1895, Méliès attended the celebrated first publi ...

and is numbered 309–310 in its catalogues. It was sold as in the United States as ''Fat and Lean Wrestling Match'' and in the United Kingdom as ''The Wrestling Sextette''. In a 1979 book on Méliès, film historian John Frazer commented: "The humor is crude but full of surreal anarchy." Film critic William B. Parrill, reviewing silent films in the 2010s, rated the film "trivial and highly amusing". Two different versions of ''Nouvelles Luttes extravagantes'' are known to survive; they feature the same cast and the same backdrop, but use slightly different set dressing, and each features an acrobatic sequence not found in the other.

References

External links

* {{Georges Méliès French black-and-white films French silent short films Films directed by Georges Méliès 1900 films Wrestling films 1900s sports films 1900 short films French sports films Silent sports films Trick films