Los guapos del parque (1904) User Reviews

Catch as Catch Can

[boblipton · 5/10 · 16 March 2010]

Considered lost for many years, this early de Chomon film turned up in the Catalonian film archives and was restored. Good for us fans of early cinema.

In structure it was a common enough type of film: a chase slapstick. In this case, it's about a farmer who puts up a notice he is looking for a wife, and is soon fleeing from a dozen women. It is worth noting that Edison released 'How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the 'New York Herald' Personal Columns' in September of 1904 and this film was first screened in December of 1904. Perhaps de Chomon saw Porter's film and transferred the venue to Spain or perhaps they both derive from a common antecedent.

In any case, this is a decent enough film for the period, with several camera placements -- all of which are unmoving -- and a decent pay off shot. It's worth the while of anyone interested in the history of film, but the two films are much of a muchness.

Muddled Spanish versions of a McCutcheon classic

[kekseksa · 3 February 2020]

At least two Spanish films have been confused here. The film Los guapos del parque (properly Los guapos de la vaquería del parque, was made by Fructuoso Gelabert and first appeared in 1905. It involved an heiress who, after advertising for a husband, is pursued by a gaggle of boys ("guapos" is Spanish are lads not lasses). It has been confused here with an earlier film, made Oct-Dec 1904) by Segundo de Chomón for the Spanish company Macaya and Marro, L'hereu de Ca'n Pruna, which is the film we have. The 1905 film is not known to survive.

The confusion arose because many years later Gelabert claimed, wrongly, that the Macaya y Marro film was a copy of his own film with the genders reversed, since when the two films have been confused in many Spanish filographies. On the other hand Gelabert's recollection is not entirely incorrect in that the film was a parody of another film, but not by Gelabert, called Un joeen distinguido desea casarse (A distinguished young man wishes to marry). In that film which also appeared in Spain in October the main character is a "distinguished young man" arriving in New York who advertises for a wife. This is probably just the original American film (Personal or the Edison copy) but Gelabert has, when accusing Macaya y Marro of plagiarism, not very honestly replaced it, in his account, by a more original version (with genders changed) that he later made of essentially the same story in 1905.

Both Spanish films are based, like the Edison film mentioned by another reviewer, on Wallace McCutcheon's Personal made for Mutoscope and Biograph in June 1904 and one of the biggest international successes the company ever enjoyed.. Other versions include Lubin's Meet me by the Fountain (1904), British Gaumont's lost Personal (1905) and, quite the best in terms of quality of the surviving films, Georges Hatot's Dix femmes pour un mari (1905) for Pathé.