Writing
Titine and her family go for a fast-motion bicycle ride while enveloping the whole public sphere in their raging tornado of bodily ventilation. They knock over pedestrians, café diners, and horse-drawn carriages. Finally, they are steamrolled by the superior fan of a gas-guzzling automobile. Translated from Le Bulletin Pathé, they “are swept in turn like simple fetuses”
Yet again, Léontine ignores the well-meaning advice of her mother. She attempts to hang her downstairs neighbor (played by a man in drag) with a rope, which she then uses to attach a bookseller’s kiosk to a moving vehicle. A vengeful mob and the police gather, as they do, but she entraps them on a scaffolding by removing the rope ladder.
In a last gasp effort to school Titine in domestic labor, her parents entrust her with housesitting. She executes her obligations with catastrophic aplomb, shattering all the dishes in the gesture of cleaning them. She manages to flood and incinerate her entire home simultaneously. In a futile effort to find her baby brother and pet dog, she inherits a horde of stray canines and orphaned babies.
The making of patriotic films was not rare among FAI productions, and Il bacio della gloria is one example, together with Armi e amori (1913) and Per la Patria! (1915). In this Speech from the Throne, which opened the 14th Legislature, the King of Italy stressed and underscored with his words the period recalling the story of the glorious conquering of Libya, sending warm greetings to the courageous men who fought, and to the heroes who fell, for the loftiness of their country. In a response worthy of these august words, immediately thereafter Pathé released this patriotic film which tells one of the many stories of courage which bring glory to the Italian flag.
Léontine lights up our lives with an electric battery, electrocuting everyone in her path. Her victims include two old ladies (played by men in drag), dancers at a café, workers on a construction site, a group of lackluster conscripts, and the local police force. To add insult to injury, she douses everyone with buckets of water.
Bigorno gets a visit to his seaside estate from a traveler, who brings a monkey and bric-a-brac for his wife and mother-in-law, and some opium for him.
Mude movie from France
The oldest surviving film in the Léontine series, this incomplete escapade features everyone’s favorite “mistress of mayhem” doing what she does best: wreaking total havoc and defying repressive authority. Léontine runs errands for a milliner, whereupon she steals the ludicrously oversized chapeau she was tasked with delivering to a valued customer. She adds insult to injury by leading her property-owning victims down a royal road of utter humiliation.
A newly-hired housekeeper turns out to be too clumsy and stupid to do her job.
What would a vacation be for Titine without hellraising mischief? As a reward for receiving high marks at school, she goes on a peaceful jaunt to the countryside to visit her aunt and uncle. Naturally, she trips the gardener, futzes with her aunt’s expensive perfume, terrifies the cooks by levitating pots and pans (with hidden string!), enjoys a bacchanalian feast of grapes and sausage, and then jumps out the window. Her uncle banishes her with a stern warning for tyrannizing their idyllic home. But Léontine does not appear chastised.
