Marie-Catherine le Jumel d'Aulnoy

How entertaining it is to toy with human destinies and outwit one another with witty conversation and gallant banter! This realization shines in the beautiful eyes of the fairy Sousio and her cousin, the magician, when they meet again, as they always do every hundred years. They must see how their human protégés are doing, the desperate, clumsy, ugly Tritonka and the charming Prince Šarmán. Perhaps all the intrigues with which the fairy tries to help her protégé would have worked, if not for one thing. The fateful love that ignites between Sharmán and Tritonka's stepsister, Princess Florina...

At the royal court, a prince is presenting the princess whom he is pledged to marry when a witch suddenly appears. Though driven off, the witch soon returns, summons some of her servants, and carries off the princess. A rescue party is quickly organized, but the unfortunate captive has been taken to a strange, forbidding realm, from where it will be impossible to rescue her without some special help.

This short film is adapted from Madame d'Aulnoy's clasic fairy tale, The White Cat. The White Cat was originally planned as a feature film musical which Anna Biller worked on over a period of a couple of years, creating an original soundtrack, over a hundred costumes, many props, and a children's book. Eventually, realizing it was a bit unconventional and expensive to raise the proper funding for, she instead adapted it for the stage with a cast of eight performers, and called the new version The Lady Cat. The film and play were trying to capture the complex nature of the character of the White Cat, an enchanted princess who has been transformed into a cat, with all of the perversions and fancies that such a transformation implies. This particular scene is about the sexual feelings that are awakened in the two lovers when they witness the awakening of spring.

large-format film theatrically released by a then-major studio and not in any sense "chronophotography" or whatever tmdb moderators think they're purging from their books.

This is a frustrating watch as there looks to be some great filmmaking there, but a number of scenes (including the beginning and end) are missing, the print is in poor condition. It looks very nice though and the production values are once again quite high, but the current presentation is a shame.