Friday Video: "Bedtime for the Bride", 1896

Isabella reporting,

As Nerdy History Girls, we look everywhere for clues to the past - even to a racy 1890s film. But if you're reading this at work, fear not: this clip is SFW viewing. While Le Coucher de la Mariée (Bedtime for the Bride, also known as The Bridegroom's Dilemma) is described as one of the earliest erotic films made, the erotic part has apparently deteriorated into nonexistence while in the care of the French Film Archives. When it was rediscovered in 1996, only the first minutes of the film remained.

So why share it here? This fragment shows a saucy bride banishing her groom to behind a screen while she undresses. . . and undresses. It may not be a very seductive performance to modern eyes, but she does demonstrate exactly how many layers of clothing and undergarments a Frenchwoman wore in 1896. No wonder the groom begins to read a newspaper in boredom!

The film was produced by Eugène Pirou and directed by Albert Kirchner (using the pseudonym Léar), and was first shown in Paris in November, 1896. Film scholars guess that the original film was about seven minutes long, but what happened between the flirtatious bride and groom in those missing five minutes must now be left to the imagination. Imagine away... and enjoy these amusing first two minutes that remain.