Madamigella Robinet - 1913
ABOUT THE FILM : Madamigella Robinet
Museo Nazionale del CinemaMiss Tweedledum
Year: 1913
The imminent arrival of a husband on the look-out cuts short the flirting between a playful couple. To divert the suspicions of the mistrusting spouse, the suitor disguises himself as a woman. A victim of his own success, the deceiver has trouble shaking off the permanently won over male cohort...
Hired by the famous Turin production company Ambrosio, from 1911 Robinet became an important figure of Italian burlesque cinema like his fellow members Cretinetti and Tontolini.
Nationality: Italian
Actors: Marcel Fabre, Nilde Baracchi, Ernesto Vaser, Angelo Vestri
Length: 3' 24"
Genre: comedy,fiction
Sound: silent with soundtrack
Original elements: black & white
Producer: S.A. Ambrosio
Composer: Rémi Boubal
Original language: Italian
A BRIEF HISTORY : Madamigella Robinet
In this 1913 short film Robinet, the scatter-brained character from Italian burlesque from 1910 onwards, still as reluctant to conform and a bit of a troublemaker, toys with the ambiguity of genres.
It was Marcel Fabre (1885-1927) from his real name Marcel Perez, a Spanish comedian, who put Robinet's costume on for the first time in 1910. This comedian with a number of stage names came from the school of the circus where he started his career in the persona of an acrobatic clown.
From the first opus, Robinet ha il sonno duro (1910), his character became a comic reference and the actor immediately experienced fame in Italy. The creation of Robinet was the wish of Arturo Ambrosio (1869-1960), producer and founder of the Ambrosio Studios. While Italian silent film was at its pinnacle, Ambrosio wanted to rival the Itala and Cinès studios, producers of the Tontolini and Cretinetti characters, two new heroes of burlesque from Turin.
In less of a burlesque style than his rival Cretinetti who opted for the powdered face more characteristic of a clown, Robinet uses one of the more widespread comic workings here: a man dressing up as a woman.
Robinet pursued his transalpine career in America where he transposed his character that had become Tweedledum and married his American partner Dorothy Earle (1892-1958) who played Twedledee. He died in obscurity in 1927 according to some, in 1929 according to others...
The original music for this film was composed by Rémi Boubal in 2010 in the context of the call for proposals launched in partnership with the Sacem (Société des auteurs compositeurs et éditeurs de musique – Society of authors, composers and music editors).
