Mobilier Fidèle (The Automatic Moving Company)

Mobilier Fidèle (The Automatic Moving Company)
Directed by Emile Cohl, France, 1910, 4 minutes.

This film is about furniture that moves on its own, and therefore, makes moving into a new home quick and easy because everything knows where it needs to go--pictures go on the wall, mattresses go onto the already assembled bed frames and a broom and dust pan clean up broken dishes. There is arguably no story, but the furniture is given life with its ability to move and arrange itself. We can associate the film with a stage production--the actors and dancers know their places, props and scenes. We view a stage performance when the piano is getting up the stairs when boxes are coming down the stairs, and the boxes immediately go back up the stairs to allow the piano a place to move. I relate this scene to dancers bustling down stairs to get off stage but need to move in order for another actor to enter the next scene.

Emile Cohl is known as one of the first animators. When this film was released, it was a big deal because it used the new concept of stop-motion animation--moving inanimate objects slightly during each frame in order to give them the appearance of moving. This film is remarkable because moving the furniture up and down in place must have been heavy and taken a while. Also, as a new technique, the stop-motion is seamless. There are no unusual jerks in the movement of the furniture--the furniture does not start on the left side of the frame and then cut to the right side of the frame. Furthermore, this film can be argued as a test, not a short film, because it is lacking the narrator we often expect from short films. This film argues that story is not necessary and that testing a technique, in its own right, also creates a short. Or, because I can associate the film to real life, does that mean there is a story? It just may always be different depending on the viewer.