An early series called "Pilules" ("Pills"), though not entirely unknown (the Hirshhorn Museum owns two), had an especially strong impact.
|
|
In the NP une boîte de pilules, the preposition DE marks that the paradigmatic choice of N2 pilules is closed, i.e. that paradigmatic contrast between the noun pilules and the other nouns that were eligible candidates is no longer the case. Therefore, at the moment of utterance, quantification (cf. une boîte de « a box of ») operates on the result of that ‘closed paradigmatic choice’.
|
|
Thus, in French two prepositions, À and DE, can be selected by the speaker to relate two nouns into a complex NP: N1 À N2 and N1 DE N2. The marker À, e.g. une boîte à pilules (« a pill box »), indicates that the paradigmatic choice of N2 (pilules) is open, which means i) that pilules is selected in the relevant paradigm (that of things for which a box can be designed), and ii) that it is selected by contrast with the other nouns that might have been chosen by the speaker (but finally were not). Such an NP will serve for instance to inform the addressee of what a particular box is intended for (for pills and not cachous or tobacco or...), although in actual fact the box could very well contain cachous or tobacco.
|
|
Stereo card of a scene from Les Pilules du diable The first great hit to match the success of Le Pied de mouton was the Cirque Olympique's Les Pilules du diable (1839), from a script by the vaudeville writer Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and two writers for circus productions, Laloue and Laurent. While the stage effects had gotten more spectacular since the initial féeries, the plots remained familiar; in this play, the rich hidalgo Sottinez, madly in love with the ingenue Isabelle, pursues her and her lover Albert through bizarre and spectacular adventures. Les Pilules du diable was widely revived and imitated, and was possibly the most celebrated féerie of all. Later successful féeries included La Biche au bois, La Chatte Blanche, and Peau d'Âne, all of which borrowed heavily from fairy tales and romances while reframing their stories to suit the tastes of the day.
|
|
Le Thermozéro is the sixth, incomplete, Jo, Zette and Jocko adventure. It began in 1958 as a Tintin adventure of the same name. Hergé had asked the French comic book creator Greg (Michel Regnier) to provide a scenario for a new Tintin story. Greg came up with two potential plots: Les Pilules (The Pills) and Le Thermozéro.
|
|
Stereoscope image of a scene from Les Pilules du diable On 16 February 1839, Les Pilules du diable, a stage spectacular written by Ferdinand Laloue, Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Clement-Philippe Laurent, premiered at the Théâtre National de Cirque- Olympique in Paris. The play was frequently revived and became accepted as one of the classics of the féerie genre, a popular French genre known for its lavish production values and fantasy plots. The play follows a bizarre, extended, and supernatural chase in which two young lovers, Isabelle and Albert, must constantly flee from a rich hidalgo, Sottinez, who is vying for Isabelle's hand in marriage. A new adaptation of the classic play, Les Quatre Cents Coups du diable by Victor de Cottens and Victor Darlay, premiered on 23 December 1905 at the Théâtre du Châtelet.
|
|
The Merry Frolics of Satan (, literally The Four Hundred Tricks of the Devil) is a 1906 French silent film by Georges Méliès. The film is an updated comedic adaptation of the Faust legend, borrowing elements from two stage féerie spectaculars: Les Pilules du diable (1839), a classic stage fantasy with knockabout comedy, and Les Quatre Cents Coups du diable (1905), a satirical update of Les Pilules du diable to which Méliès had contributed two sequences, one of which he incorporated into the present film. In addition to directing and acting in it, Méliès supervised all aspects of the film's design and trick effect work, including extensive use of stage machinery, in his lavishly individual style, which was already unusual in the mass production-dominated French film industry. The film follows the adventures of an ambitious engineer who abandons his family and responsibilities when he barters with the Devil (played by Méliès himself) for superhuman powers.
|
|
Other notable Cogniard productions were La Chatte blanche with the café-concert performer Thérésa, the trick-filled La Poudre de Perlinpinpin, and, in collaboration with the vaudeville writer Clairville, the 1858 Variétés production Les Bibelots du diable, a comic spectacle with winking references and allusions to most of the major féeries that had gone before it. The comic strain of Le Pied de mouton and Les Pilules du diable was emphasized in many of these successes, such as Les Sept Châteaux, Perlinpinpin, and Les Bibelots. Poster for an 1874 Théâtre du Châtelet production of Les Pilules du diable Because of the large scale of the spectacle, the biggest and most technically equipped Parisian stages became the most in-demand venues for the shows. The Cirque Olympique, formerly an arena used for political and equestrian spectacles, took advantage of its deep stage to present expensively mounted féeries; it was eventually replaced by a new auditorium built specifically for spectacle, the Théâtre du Châtelet.
|
|
Another inspiration for The Bewitched Inn probably came from a popular and influential 1839 féerie, Les Pilules du Diable, which included a scene in a haunted room. The film was shot outdoors, in Méliès's garden in Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis. The inanimate objects were animated using wires; other special effects were created using pyrotechnics and the editing technique known as the substitution splice, which allowed the magical disappearances to occur. Méliès himself played the traveler.
|
|
The Magic Pills (Les Pilules magiques) is a ballet-féerie in 3 acts/13 scenes, with choreography by Marius Petipa and music by Ludwig Minkus. The ballet was first presented by the Imperial Ballet on February 9/21 (Julian/Gregorian calendar dates), 1886 at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia. Principal Dancers: Eugeniia Sokolova. This ballet was presented in honor of the inauguration of the Mariinsky Theatre as the Imperial Ballet and Opera's principal venue in 1886.
|
|
In honor of the relocation to the new theatre, a lavish gala performance was planned for February 1886, which included the Petipa/Minkus work Les Pilules magiques (The Magic Pills). The work included three danced tableaux: the first took place in a cave inhabited by sorceresses, while the second included various card games brought to life through dance. The third and final tableau was known as The Kingdom of the Laces in which a Grand divertissement of national dances from Belgium, England, Spain and Russia was performed.
|
|
Jean-Pierre or Pierre Blaud (1773/1774, Nîmes – 8 May 1859, Beaucaire), Maurice Bouvet Les pilules de Blaud, Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie 145:118-123, 1955.Walter Sneader, Drug Discovery: A History, John Wiley & Sons, 2005, page 44.BLAUD (Pierre) in La littérature française contemporaine (1827-1849), Volume 1, page 596, Daguin Freres, 1840 often seen as P. Blaud of/de Beaucaire Churchill, Fleetwood and William Valentine Keating. P. Blaud de Beaucaire, On the Diseases of Infants and Children, second edition, Blanchard and Lea, 1856, 735 pages, page 230.
|
|
Tintin pursues the fellow and finds him just as the substance in question is about to unleash its damaging effects. He turned the project over to staff at Studios Hergé to work on, with the cartoonist Greg developing two plot synopsis for two stories, Les Pilules ("The Pills") and Tintin et le Thermozéro ("Tintin and the Thermozero"). Hergé took the latter project and produced eight pages of pencil drawings for it. However, Hergé was uncomfortable with working on a story already plotted out by someone else, commenting that: :I felt like a prisoner in a straitjacket unable to get out.
|
|
Misaubin appeared in a number of satirical prints. Strikingly tall and thin, he was ridiculed for his fondness for alcohol, his outlandish manners, and his thick French accent: Watteau quoted his saying "Prenez les pilules". He was the model for the doctor in William Hogarth's The Harlot's Progress (Plate 5), and he is one of four physicians held up for ridicule in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones. Fielding says that Misaubin told people to address letters to him as "To Dr. Misaubin in the World" for "there were few People in it to whom his great Reputation was not known" (Tom Jones, book 13, chapter 2).
|
|
In the center is Mathilde Kschessinskaya as Nikiya (right) kneeling with Vera Trefilova (left) who performed the Danse manu. Standing toward the right is Pavel Gerdt as Solor with Olga Preobrajenskaya as Gamzatti. St. Petersburg, 1900 Scene The Kingdom of the Laces from the Minkus/Petipa Les Pilules magiques, St. Petersburg, 1886. This work was created for a gala celebrating the inauguration of the Mariinsky Theatre as principal venue of the Imperial Ballet and Opera, and has the distinction of being the first new ballet created for the theatre. For the Moscow Imperial Bolshoi Theatre's 1869–1870 season, Petipa staged a Grand ballet based on Miguel de Cervantes' early 17th century novel Don Quixote.
|
|
Stereo card of a scene from Les Pilules du diable Féeries used a fairy-tale aesthetic to combine theatre with music, dances, mime, acrobatics, and especially spectacular visual effects created by innovative stage machinery, such as trap doors, smoke machines, and quickly changeable sets. Songs always appeared, usually featuring new lyrics to familiar melodies. Transformation scenes, in which a scene would change as if by magic in full view of the audience, were an important component of the style; until 1830, nearly all scene changes in féeries were full-view transformations. The last transformation in a féerie, accompanied by a flourish of music, led to the apotheosis: a grand final stage picture, usually involving beautiful supernumeraries descending from the sky or suspended on wires.
|
|
These elements, especially the spectacle and stage effects, were far more prominent than the plot. The critic Francisque Sarcey suggested that for a féerie, the crew in charge of design and stagecraft should be regarded as more important than the writers, noting that the scripts themselves were so incoherent that "one can put the beginning at the end, and vice versa." Théophile Gautier even suggested, with considerable irony, that the immensely successful féerie Les Pilules du diable could be performed as a purely mimed production, so that no spoken words would distract the audience from the spectacle they had come to enjoy. The total effect was one of a dazzling, dreamlike array of visuals, harkening back to fairy-tale traditions and a childlike sense of wonder through the use of innovative stage technology.
|
|
The Merry Frolics of Satan is strongly influenced by the legend of Faust, but maintains the modernized comic tone of the féeries. It involves numerous recurring themes in Méliès's work, such as a pact with the Devil, a celestial voyage, and a final triumphant scene in Hell; indeed, the end of the film strongly resembles Méliès's earlier The Damnation of Faust, complete with its detailed scenery and bat-winged demons. The farcically choreographed kitchen scene, the hectic pacing of which recalls Méliès's The Cook in Trouble (1904), faithfully reproduces the set and stage machinery that had been traditionally used for the equivalent scene in Les Pilules du diable ever since 1839. The film was made primarily in Méliès's studio, with the outdoor scenes in the Italian village filmed just outside it, in the garden of the Méliès family property in Montreuil-sous-Bois.
|
|