Toto et sa soeur en bombe à Bruxelles
P: Pathé Frères. Fr 1910
Print: CINEMATEK – Het Koninklijk Belgisch Filmarchief

“(…) the bricolage model seems to have developed as a combinatoire of prior genres. In one sense, this model could be seen as an offshot of the féerie, in which relatively ‘real’ spaces replaced that genre’s typically fantastical decors. In another sense, however, it worked a variation on the historical reconstruction film by joining actualité footage to contemporary fictional scenes. And it often drew on the travel film genre that, as Musser has demonstrated, was so popular among American producers such as Edison around 1903/1904 – see, for instance, Rube and Mandy at Coney Island (1903) and European Rest Cure (1904). In this hybrid format, Pathé essentially cobbled together different genre elements and conventions, as if in an attempt to condense the variety of ‘acts’ on a music hall or cinema program into a single marketable form.”
Richard Abel: The Ciné Goes to Town. French Cinema 1896-1914. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 1998, p. 105

>>> Rube and Mandy at Coney Island on this site: Edwin S. Porter: Blockbuster for Edison

The European Rest Cure
R und K: Edwin S. Porter. D: Joseph Hart. P: Edison Manufacturing Company. USA 1904

“The surprisingly long travelogue comedy The European Rest Cure (1904) was an ambitious comedy starring Joseph Hart as a rube, the original ‘ugly American’ who sets out on a sea journey in a tale crowded with incidents. Hart was a popular Vaudeville comic whose best known character ‘Foxy Grampa’ was featured in Hart’s other nine kinescope films.(…)
A middleaged overweight man, obviously a hick, kisses his family farewell & boards the ocean liner, with many a waving handkerchief or hat from dock to ship. The cinematography of the Hudson River & the New York city skyline strives for the expansive, capturing the beauty & drama of the passing world. Later footage, however, will not be locaton shots, the bulk of the film being comedy shtick on wonderfully designed stage sets.”
Paghat the Ratgirl