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This booklet, devoted to certain distributors of substandard gauge films (8mm, super 8mm, 9.5mm and 16mm), reprints a number of articles which have already appeared in the A.L.I.C.C. magazine "Infos-Ciné". Some of these distributors were still in existence at the time the articles were originally published. Today, they have almost all disappeared and the interest of this booklet is documentation rather than information.

The lists of films accompanying the articles are mainly limited to features in complete or condensed versions. Despite the care taken with this review, some errors or omissions may have crept in. This booklet is, as you will know, far from exhaustive and its aim, apart from the trifling service it may render to collectors (principally to guide their researches), would be to encourage the preparation of a reference work on the subject.

Thanks are due to the authors who have allowed me to use their articles, and especially to Pierre Guerin, Serge Moroy, Antoine Orsero and Gilbert Saradin for their invaluable help.

The name "Pathé Baby" is forever associated with the creation of the 9.5mm gauge, which allowed amateur cinema to take its first steps. It was the perfect format because, with the much smaller film area, and therefore lower cost, it allowed the best possible picture to be obtained, with remarkable definition and clarity. This new offshoot of the Pathé group planned moreover to make this new format the home cinema par excellence, simultaneously educational, moral and entertaining.

In this, Pathé-Baby was not innovating, but taking its cue from the "Pathé-KOK", the "drawing-room cinematograph" launched before the war and which publicity in 1921 promised would be "the finest entertainment, the home cinema, safe, installation-free and easy to use", offering a "constantly updated choice of several thousand subjects". But this low light output machine (it produced its own electricity from a dynamo), used film 28mm wide, the high price of which had limited uptake. With the launch in 1922 of projectors and films at much more modest prices, Pathé-Baby would bring the dream of the home cinema within everyone’s reach.

The projector was compact and designed for small 30ft closed film cassettes. An ingenious notching system which stopped the film for the necessary length of time on titles or still pictures brought economy in the use of film, leaving scope for improved cut-down versions of film subjects. The first Pathé-Baby films (whose emblem was a chick coming out of its shell) were educational: "Travel, Agriculture, Natural History, Popular Science, Sport and physical Culture", such were the main classifications of the second catalogue (October 1923). An important place was also accorded to entertainment films with "Comedies and Dramas" and "Fairy and Trick Scenes", while propriety inspired such sections as "Religious and Biblical Films", "Historical Reconstructions" and "Fables and Pictures from Epinal". (?)

To furnish these latter sections, it was only necessary to dip into the Pathé archives and into those American films for which the company already had the French distribution rights. At first, it was a matter of 30ft extracts where Harold Lloyd, Beaucitron (Snub Pollard) and Charlot (Chaplin) rubbed shoulders with "Belle Epoque" comedians such as Max Linder, Roméo Bosetti, Rigadin, AndréDeed……. Cartoons offered a good selection from the work of Lortac, Benjamin Rabier et O’Galop. Dramas were heavily edited to 4, 6 or 8 cassettes. Similarly cut were the biblical films shot by Andréani from 1911 to 1913: The Judgement of Solomon (90 ft), Abraham’s Sacrifice (60 ft), Rebecca (120 ft), Jephte’s Daughter (90 ft), etc….and the famous "art films" of 1908 The Return of Ulysses (150 ft), (150 ft) and The Assassination of the Duc de Guise (240ft). They had been preceded by a Life of Jesus divided into 32 chapters to ease projection of such great length. The growing success of these cut-down versions encouraged the management of Pathé-Baby to produce longer films: The Queen’s Necklace (filmed in 1912 by Camille de Morlhon with actors from the Comédie Française) was edited to 18 cassettes, a record soon surpassed by The Right to Life, made by Abel Gance in 1916: 24 cassettes!

Moreover, this film marked a new stage, pompously announced in these terms: "with The Right to Life we begin a series of major films from Abel Gance, a film-maker of genius, one of whose master-works we present today in a powerful edited version". This was a step-change; without abandoning its educational aims, the company would henceforth present to its customers each month condensed versions of great works performed by the best actors of the day.

But the need to split into 30ft cassettes films that could not be drastically edited down quickly became apparent as a major obstacle to their release. 1929 therefore saw the introduction of the G cassette, with the same appearance as its predecessor but holding 60ft, then the 300 ft Super Reel that amateurs could use after equipping their projector with extension arms and a small motor. The market too was changing. The first Pathé-Baby machines were succeeded in 1931 by the Pathé-Lux, with better light output and designed equally for cassettes and Super reels. The principle of 30 and 60 ft cassettes was retained, but henceforth these were grouped into 300ft chapters which could be bought ready-mounted on 300 ft Super reels.

Now Pathé-Baby could move into issuing films of more and more importance; the great films of the day edited down to acceptable proportions. Films with 5, 6 and 7 chapters were not uncommon, the record being reached in 1931 by The Wandering Cobbler: 12 chapters, equivalent to 60 G cassettes! But if there was ample choice, this was increasingly limited to the output of French Pathé or those of organisations it more or less controlled (Film d’Art, Société des Cinéromans….). Few American films (Captain Blood in 3 reels, Vitagraph 1924) or European (Christus, Italy 1914…) but the bulk of the work of the great directors of the day: Henri Roussel (Destiny, 3 reels, Paris Girls, 5 reels…), Henri Fescourt (Les Misérables, 5 reels, The Leech, 3 reels, The West, 6 reels ), Jacques Feyder (Carmen, 4 reels), Julien Duvivier ( The Whirlwind of Paris, 4 reels, The Happiness of Women, 4 reels ), Marcel L’Herbier (Money, 6 reels, The Devil at the Heart, 4 reels), Luitz-Morat (The Wandering Jew, 6 reels) as well as the films of Abel Gance: The Right to Life (720 ft), Mother of Sorrow (240 ft), The Tenth Symphony (300 ft), I Accuse! (600 ft), The Wheel (1000 ft) and especially, the incontestable jewel of the catalogue, Napoleon, issued at 3000 ft, preserving the essentials of the artistic innovations of this great work.

By 1930, the Pathé-Baby company could be justifiably proud of its achievements: in less than 10 years, it had secured major markets, both in France and abroad, and fully realised its ambitious plans. From 1926 a small monthly magazine, in the company’s house colour blue, had introduced and reviewed the new titles put on sale each month. Across the country, a vast network of rental companies offered, for a modest sum, a true home cinema, thanks to a richly varied catalogue and films of remarkable picture quality.

A new stage began shortly after, due in part to representations from the rental companies. The notching system, ingenious though it was, proved disastrous in use. The mechanism needed great attention. It went wrong easily, tearing film and perforations: excess heat rapidly buckled and shrivelled the film. As the first to suffer from the results, the renters were quick to demand the abandonment of the system. This was progressively implemented with the appearance in April 1933 of the first

S. B. films, available only on Super reels and with running titles. At the same time, a new series was created: the Pathé Selection library which was claimed to be even better in quality than the current series, which was itself progressively converted to S. B.

But the adoption of running titles was not accompanied by a corresponding increase in the length of films. On the contrary, these were limited to 3, 4 or 5 reels, which constituted a net reduction as compared with the old series. The "condensed version" approach prevailed, for all its faults, the company also adopting moral aims, having regard to a clientele comprised mainly of youth clubs, expurgating their output to remove any element that might be deemed immoral and emphasising the educational aspects of its products.

The greatest flowering of this series was a selection of the best films produced in Germany in the previous decade by the great German company UFA: first the great films of Fritz Lang (La Mort de Siegfried, 4 S. B., La Vengeance de Kriemhild 4 S. B., Métropolis, 5 S. B., Les Espions, 4 S. B.) but also Robert Wiene’s Le Cabinet du docteur Caligari,(3 S. B.), Arnold Fanck’s La Montagne sacrée , (3 S. B.), Joe May’s Le Chant du prisonnier, (4 S. B.), F.W. Murnau’s Faust (4 S. B.) and many others. Among the comedies appeared complete (or near-complete) shorts from Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Stan Laurel and other less well-known comedians. The new series was also enriched by some important silent films, such as Jacques Feyder’s Crainquebille, (4 S. B.) and Visages d’enfants (4 S. B.), Léon Poirier’s La Brière, (5 S. B.) and especially Tempête sur l’Asie, (4 S. B.), from the Russian director Pudovkin.

But the problem of choice soon reared its head. Since 1929, no more silent films had been made. No doubt fearful of upsetting their clientele by drawing on stocks of old films, Pathé-Baby began to make silents out of sound films: at first using sub-titles so the dialogue could be followed, then replacing some of these with intertitles as in the past. Such bastardised versions hold only a slight interest for the cine enthusiast, the original not having been intended to be shown without speech, the rythmn being completely different; the result was often a deplorable mish-mash, as with the famous Leon Poitier film, Verdun visions d’histoire. The version edited for this release was not the silent version of 1928 but the sound version of 1931, for which many scenes had had sound added and which was now turned back into a silent film!

In parallel, and to keep up with events, Pathé-Baby developed and launched 9.5 sound, which was slow to succeed. It must be recognised that, from a technical viewpoint, the system was far from perfect: optical recordings on 9.5 film were mediocre and the first projectors were heavy and cumbersome with limited sound output. The 9.5 catalogue was adorned by important titles from the early days of sound films, such as Les Croix de bois directed by Raymond Bernard, G. W. Pabst’s Quatre de l’infanterie, Maurice Tourneur’s Accusé levez-vous….Some moreover were issued in two versions, silent and sound, such as L’ami Fritz from Jacques de Baroncelli, Marc Allégret’s Sans famille or Julien Duvivier ‘s Maria Chapdelaine, as well as the famous Les Cent jours, directed by the Italian Forzano in glorification of Napoleon.

On the eve of war, the position of Pathé-Baby still remained very strong, but it was already threatened by the introduction into the French market of the American 8mm gauge launched under the Kodascope name several years earlier and which boasted a catalogue rich in American silent films. The turmoil over, Pathé-Baby sought in vain to regain its former privileged position. Sticking with the same principles, the company once more adapted French and foreign sound films into edited silent versions, without identifying their origin and often under different titles. In this mélange appeared several American silents, among them three starring the great actor, Lon Chaney, directed by Tod Browning: Les Trois X (The Unholy Three 1925), Monsieur Joe (The Road to Mandalay 1926) and Tragédie au cirque (The Unknown 1927). Collectors take note.

As for 9.5 sound, at last endowed with faithfully-recorded sound and portable, precision equipment (such as the Pathé-Joinville), it showed signs of recovery and could briefly imagine it had attracted all those who rejected the expense of 16mm. Did not the re-invigorated catalogue boast a wide range of films of high repute? The famous King Kong, Jacques Becker’s Dernier atout, Louis Daquin’s Nous les gosses, René Clair’s Le Silence est d’or…..

But this was only a swan-song. Pathé-Baby had to face ever greater competition from television, which brought a constant stream of new sound programmes into the living room. The decline in popularity of 9.5 was accelerated by numerous amateur enthusiasts falling prey to an insidious campaign in favour of the American 8 and 16mm gauges. It is an open question whether, at this critical time, the directors of Pathé-Baby really knew how to guide their enterprise to confront this invasion. What is certain is that Pathé-Baby as such disappeared, its film issuing role being taken over by the "Société Commerciale et Industrielle Pathé", with films in 8 and 9.5mm but with the same approach: silent adaptations of recent films. At a time when film institutes, clubs and historians were re-discovering the past history of cinema, and that history was creating great enthusiasm, the way forward surely lay elsewhere.

At the same time, Pathé was also facing competition in its own back yard from a new distributor, Film Office, which, in the three classic gauges, included in its catalogue, alongside the inevitable mutes, a significant selection of American comedians and several great films from the silent era (among them Battleship Potemkin).

9.5 persists today, fiercely defended by its users despite the irresistible tide of video. In the course of its long existence, Pathé-Baby indisputably showed its intrinsic qualities: it instilled in several generations a love of the cinema; through its films, even in cut-down versions, it presented in eloquent synthesis the history of that seventh art referred to by Louis Delluc. These are the claims to fame of which its creator Charles Pathé can boast in the hereafter.

(This article by Roger Icart appeared in June/July 1972 in Issue No. 4 of "Cinémathèque pour vous" and in July 1993 in Infos-Ciné No. 21).

(Roger Icart has prepared an extended version of his article entitled "9.5 tells the history of the cinema", published in issues 37 through 43 of Infos-Ciné).

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