''The Woes of Roller Skaters'',
[ also known as ''The Woes of Roller Skates'',]
Production
''The Woes of Roller Skaters'' was apparently inspired by a 1905 or 1906 film by Pathé Frères
Pathé or Pathé Frères (, styled as PATHÉ!) is the name of various French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest film equipme ...
, featuring a character very similar to the exaggeratedly obese man in this film.[ Méliès appears in the film as the passerby attacked by "Apaches" at the end. The actor Bruneval plays the commissioner of police, with Méliès's set painter Claudel as one of the police officers. ]Fernande Albany
Fernande Françoise Raoult, known professionally as Fernande Albany (22 December 1889, Lison – 25 November 1966, Paris), was a French actress in theatre and film.
Career
Albany appeared in many of the films of Georges Méliès.
Her work ...
plays one of the ladies.
Themes
The film is one of several Méliès works in which spectators watching movement begin unintentionally to imitate it: in this case, a cancan and then a roller skating
Roller skating is the act of traveling on surfaces with roller skates. It is a recreational activity, a sport, and a form of transportation. Roller rinks and skate parks are built for roller skating, though it also takes place on streets, sid ...
act.[ Like Méliès's 1905 comedy '' The Scheming Gambler's Paradise'', the film parodies the police by showing them making their own comical use of confiscated objects.][
]
Release
The film was released by Méliès's Star Film Company, and is numbered 1227–1232 in its American catalogues. (There was no known French release of the film.)[ It was registered for American copyright at the ]Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...
on 21 July 1908.
References
External links
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1908 films
Films directed by Georges Méliès
French silent short films
French black-and-white films
French comedy films
1908 comedy films
1908 short films
Silent comedy films
1900s French films
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