Director: Gaston Velle

La métamorphose du papillon is a slight but reasonably well-performed short film from Gaston Velle, one of the less revered of the early French filmmakers. I think the idea was that the viewer was supposed to be fooled into thinking he was watching a real caterpillar changing into a chrysalis. Of course, we aren’t really watching a tiny caterpillar on a leaf, but an actor or actress writhing about in a sort of sleeping bag on a giant prop. The second shot we see is of the butterfly fluttering its wings for a while before we suddenly discover the ‘butterfly’ is actually a young woman. The woman then turns around and proves herself to be something of a contortionist as she reveals how she had us all fooled.

(Reviewed 28th June 2009)