Oh, and it must have been all the public executions, guillotine, etc., but in the SF Silent Festival program Retour de Flamme (Rescued from the Flammes), Serge Bromberg, presenter and pianist showed in the short films and fragments, two beheadings, a horrible fall from the sky that resulted in the unfortunate being impaled, a burning at the stake (1902 Joan of Arc), a very scary dancing pig, and a clarinetist who has a piece of furniture fall on him and the result is his clarinet being forced through the back of his head (alas, that fragment of film ended before we would ever know whether or not he or the myriad of people he employed could remove it). Hysterical, and kinda gross, too. Sort of like movies today, just not all the inane dialogue to go with them. The hand tinted films were amazing. There was also a previously unknown film (they have not identified it) short film about a fireman who goes to the Follies Bergere, gets blotto and the rest of the film is filled with his view of th world (very Man Ray in the begining) and then everyone ends up nude (including a clergyman) and this film is important because Josephine Baker also makes an appearence in costume (and topless). Oh those frenchies!
