The Cabbage Fairy - La Fée aux Choux (1896) FULL VIDEO

 

The Cabbage Fairy (1896)
Original Title: La Fée aux Choux
Director: Alice Guy-Blaché
Story: Alice Guy-Blaché

Cast: Alice Guy-Blaché, (likely, though the original 1896 cast is unconfirmed) Germaine Serand, Yvonne Serand

Release Date: 1896
Country of Origin: France

In a whimsical garden setting, a fairy appears among oversized cabbages. With magical gestures, she reveals real-life babies (and at times, dolls) nestled within the foliage, plucking them from the plants and placing them in a pile, bringing to life the popular French folklore that baby boys are born in cabbages and baby girls are born in roses.

La Fée aux Choux is widely considered the first narrative fiction film ever made. While the 1896 original is now a "lost film," Alice Guy-Blaché, the first female filmmaker, later produced remakes in 1900 and 1902 to preserve the story. The 1896 version was filmed on 60mm film and was approximately one minute long.

• Pioneering Work: Alice Guy-Blaché created this film while working as a secretary for Léon Gaumont. It was intended as a demonstration of the entertainment potential of the new Gaumont motion-picture camera.

• The "Lost" Original: The 1896 version is distinct from the surviving 1900 and 1902 versions. According to Guy-Blaché’s own memoirs, the 1896 original featured a honeymoon couple, a farmer, and a different sequence of events than the later versions that focused primarily on the fairy.

• Production Challenges: Guy-Blaché noted that the original film suffered from technical difficulties: the painted cabbage props were a shade of green that appeared black on the high-contrast orthochromatic film of the time, and the backdrop fluttered in the wind.

• Cultural Inspiration: The film was inspired in part by a 1896 baby incubator exhibition in Paris, where live infants were displayed in specialized glass boxes, which Guy-Blaché visited and found deeply memorable.

Many of the specific details regarding the 1896 production were recorded in Guy-Blaché’s memoirs and corroborated by film historians, despite the physical print of the film no longer being in existence.

La Fée aux Choux (1896) is widely recognized by film historians as a watershed moment in the evolution of cinema. Its pioneering achievements stem from its shift away from the "actuality" films (documentary-style footage of everyday life) that dominated the medium's earliest days toward the art of storytelling.

Pioneering Achievements

• Pioneer of Narrative Fiction: La Fée aux Choux is credited as one of the first films in history to move beyond recording real-world events and instead utilize a fictional, staged narrative. While contemporary films mostly captured scenes like workers leaving a factory or trains pulling into a station, Alice Guy-Blaché envisioned film as a tool for storytelling.

• The First Female Filmmaker: The film marks the directorial debut of Alice Guy-Blaché. By directing, writing, and producing this work, she became the first woman in history to direct a film. She would go on to have a prolific career spanning over 1,000 films, eventually becoming a studio head.

• Development of "Cinema of Attractions": The film was one of the earliest examples of using the "magic" of cinema to create fantasy-based attractions for audiences. By staging a "miracle" (pulling living babies from oversized cabbages), Guy-Blaché demonstrated that the camera could create illusions that theater alone could not achieve.

• A Foundation for Film Production: At the time, the Gaumont Film Company was focused on technical demonstrations of their cameras. Guy-Blaché convinced them that motion pictures could be an entertainment medium rather than just a mechanical curiosity. This shift paved the way for the transformation of film production into a creative, artistic industry.

• Creative Adaptation of Folklore: It was among the first instances of using national or cultural folklore (the French saying that "boys are born in cabbages and girls in roses") as the basis for a cinematic script, effectively proving that literature and cultural myths were viable sources for film plots.

Historical Context

While the 1896 version is unfortunately lost, historians note that it was inspired by a real-world event—the "Baby Incubator" exhibition in Paris—where Alice Guy-Blaché observed premature infants being cared for in glass enclosures. Her ability to synthesize contemporary events, cultural myths, and emerging visual technology into a coherent, one-minute narrative was a revolutionary leap forward for the medium of film.