
Monsieur et Madame sont pressés (In a Hurry to Catch the Train). 1901. France. Directed by Ferdinand Zecca. Digital restoration courtesy Filmoteca de Catalunya, from a hand-colored nitrate print attributed to the workshop of film colorists Élisabeth and Berthe Thuillier. 2 min.
Until 2020, early cinema scholars and historians of film color only knew about Élisabeth Thuillier, a widow who ran her own photographic and then film-coloring company in Paris. (Georges Méliès reportedly outsourced the hand-coloring of his films to the firm from approximately 1897 to 1912.) Thanks to extensive archival research by WFPP contributors Stéphanie Salmon and Jacques Malthête, we now know that Élisabeth’s daughter, Berthe, was also a film colorist and worked closely with her mother, taking over the company after the latter’s death in 1907. The Thuilliers’ firm reportedly employed approximately 200 female colorists and also handled much of the color work for other companies, including Pathé—which produced this delightful trick film about a couple’s swapping garments—from at least 1898 until around 1911 or 1912.
Adam a Eva (Adam and Eva). 1922. Czechoslovakia. Directed by Václav Binovec. Written by Suzanne Marwille, based on a story by Jarmila Hašková. With Marwille, Marta Fričová. DCP courtesy Národní filmový archiv. Czech intertitles; English subtitles. 72 min.
By the time she wrote the screenplay for Adam a Eva, a loopy and queer cross-dressing comedy in which she plays identical twins Adam and Eva, Suzanne Marwille was a highly regarded Czech film star known for playing passionate, tragic women. This film centers on the mischievous twins—played as children by Marwille’s daughter Marta—who, as teenagers, cause much confusion when they each pretend to be the other after a young doctor starts admiring Eva. In Marwille’s playful performance, gender is shown to be thoroughly a construct. Adam a Eva is one of several films that Marwille wrote for herself in 1921–22. (The other surviving titles are Černí myslivci and Irčin románek I, in which she also plays a cheeky young girl.) After a short time performing in German films from 1922 to 1925, Marwille returned to the Czech industry and acted in several more films, including both silent and sound movies made by her third husband, noted Czech director Martin Frič, whom she reportedly often advised and helped even after she retired. In 1931, she joined the ČEFID, a Czech film co-operative that worked with cinemas and local production and rental companies to ensure capital for domestic films.