Pauvre Pierrot (1892)

English title: Poor Pierrot.

The plot summary on the Internet Movie Database is accurate: "One night, Arlequin come[s] to see his lover Colombine. But then Pierrot knocks at the door and Colombine and Arlequin hide[s]. Pierrot starts singing but Arlequin scares him and the poor man goes away." (Grammatical corrections between square brackets are mine.)

An excellent historical presentation of this movie is given by F. Gwynplaine McIntyre, on the Internet Movie Database user comment section:

"Charles-Émile Reynaud deserves credit as the inventor of the animated cartoon. Unfortunately, he was a poor businessman, and his artistic innovations outstripped the technical hardware which he invented to exhibit them. Reynaud died penniless in a Val-de-Marne hospice. A few years before he died, embittered, he took most of his animated films -- too deteriorated to be restored yet again -- and flung them off Pont Saint-Michel into the Seine. I am reluctant to describe any movie as 'lost' unless it was deliberately destroyed, since many early films which some expert described as 'lost forever' have returned from the dead. Sadly, it does appear that the most of the cartoons drawn and produced by Reynaud -- each running 15 minutes or less -- are, indeed, lost.

Reynaud's first innovation was to adapt the zoetrope -- basically a toy -- into the more sophisticated praxinoscope. This placed a series of drawings on the inside of a cylinder, with a mirror at the centre. As the cylinder revolved, an onlooker -- viewing the mirror through a slit -- would see the drawings as a continuous moving image, courtesy of the same optical illusion (persistence of vision) now exploited by modern films. But the length of the 'story' told by a praxinoscope was limited to the number of images which could be displayed within the cylinder's finite diameter. Usually, a praxinoscope's drawings depicted a single event happening over and over (with each circuit of the cylinder).

Reynaud's next innovation was to devise a much longer filmstrip, which -- with sprocket holes -- could be fed into and out of the praxinoscope so as to display a much longer sequence of images. A dedicated artist, Reynaud painted his drawings in bright elaborate colours, and affixed them to the transparent filmstrip via a flexible clear gelatin. Unfortunately, Reynaud's technical innovations did not allow for the permanence of his art. As the gelatin aged, it hardened and cracked while turning opaque. The heat of his projection lamp corrupted the delicate colours of his images. The sprocket holes tore easily. The very act of projecting his filmstrips contributed to their destruction. This seems to have been the single greatest reason for Reynaud's commercial failure: the tremendous amount of labour, time and money expended on creating one of his filmstrips could not be recouped in the very small number of projections (for paying audiences) which it would sustain before deteriorating.
(...)"

This small gem is an enchanting piece of cinematic prehistory, artistically done. Its amusing narrative is interesting too, as it evokes the fear of the supernatural, and the profitable use that a pragmatic lover makes of it.