Fat and Lean Wrestling Match

Nouvelles Luttes extravagantes, known in English as Fat and Lean Wrestling Match and as The Wrestling Sextette, is a 1900 French short silent film directed by Georges Méliès.

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.[1]

Special effects used in the film include pyrotechnics, mannequins, black wires put on the ground to manipulate the detached parts of the body, and substitution splices. The smaller of the two female wrestlers is played by Jehanne d'Alcy.[1]

Release and reception

Nouvelles Luttes extravagantes was sold by Méliès's Star Film Company 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.[2] Film critic William B. Parrill, reviewing silent films in the 2010s, rated the film "trivial and highly amusing".[3]

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.[4]

References
  1. Essai de reconstitution du catalogue français de la Star-Film; suivi d'une analyse catalographique des films de Georges Méliès recensés en France, Bois d'Arcy: Service des archives du film du Centre national de la cinématographie, 1981, pp. 90–91, ISBN 2903053073, OCLC 10506429
  2. Malthête, Jacques; Mannoni, Laurent (2008), L'oeuvre de Georges Méliès, Paris: Éditions de La Martinière, p. 342, ISBN 9782732437323
  3. Parrill, William B. (2011), European Silent Films on Video: A Critical Guide, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, p. 474
  4. Gianetto, Claudia (2012), "Nouvelles Luttes extravagantes", Giornate Database, Pordenone Silent Film Festival, retrieved 17 December 2017
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