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Pirou Does Porn
Portrait photographer (and dirty postcard distributor) Eugene Pirou earned himself a dubious place in cinema history this year when he invented a genre that is still today arguably the world’s most popular.
Pirou had been presenting films at the Café de la Paix on the boulevard des Capucines in Paris in competition with the Lumiere brothers since April 1896, using a projector designed by Henri Joly (who had, by now, parted company with Charles Pathe) and Ernest Normandin. Pirou had awarded himself the sobriquet of “photographe des rois”, and did actually film the visit of Tsar Nicholas II to France in October 1896. Pirou duly projected his film at the café on the 21st October, but it is not for this that he is remembered so much as for one of the other films he produced and screened at the same exhibition.
The film was entitled Le Coucher de la Marie and starred an actress named Louise Willy, who recreated a role she played on stage for the film. In the film, which lasted approximately three minutes and was directed by a chap called Lear (Albert Kirchner), Miss Willy performed the cinema’s first ever striptease, and created a sensation in Paris. Demand was so great that Pirou screened the film at two other locations in the city, and even presented a show at the Casino in Nice in late December; other filmmakers weren’t slow to notice the popularity of Pirou’s ‘stag’ movie, and such notaries as Charles Pathe and Georges Melies quickly began filming their own saucy pics, which were known as scenes grivoises d’un caractere piquant. Pirou quickly cashed in on his success with such films as Lever de Mlle Willy, and Deshabille d’un modele. [ADD]
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