There is no good reason for believing this film has naything to do with Segundo de Chomón. He was extremely busy making his first Spanish films in 1904-1905 in Barcelona and did not come to Paris until summoned by Charles Pathé in the Spring of 1906, following the defection of Gaston Velle to Cines in Italy. Chomón had worked as a colourist for Pathé since about 1901 and, from arounf 1904 the firm of Macaya y Marro, one of those for which he worked in Spain, became accredited Pathé representatives in Barcelona and Chomón began to make topicalities (actualités) in the city for Pathé. He also seems to have had some input into two Pathé films in 1905, Le Roi des dollars and Velle's Poule aux oeufs d'or which were in both cases based on films made earlier by Chomón in Spain. But otherwise his career with Pathé would not begin until 1906.
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kekseksa4 February 2020
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planktonrules12 February 2014Segundo de Chomón was a prolific Spanish director who made a lot of films for the Pathé Brothers company--both in his native Castille and in Paris. Here he has made a silly film which might have delighted audiences back in 1906 but today it just seems a bit dopey and weird. A guy is trying to shave but when he looks in the mirror, images of weirdos in masks keep appearing! Eventually, he deals with this by smashing the mirror with a hammer, though a visit to the doctor might have been a better idea! This is weird enough that you can almost look past the oddness of the guy EATING his shaving cream! However, the humor seems very broad and doesn't have the complexity or charm of many of the director's other films. Decent and watchable but also a bit dumb.
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n-3185119 June 2018EY yo the part where he shaves is cool dawg, so good jesus Christ nibba
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Horst_In_Translation23 October 2017"Ah! La barbe!" or "A Funny Shave" is a French film from 1906, so this one is not only aver a century old, but even over 110 years old. Writer and director was Spaniard Segundo de Chomón, in his mid-30s at that point, and as we know today he really was among the big names of his era. It is of course a black-and-white silent film. And it involves a magic mirror long before Snow White. This mirror is also at the very core of the comedy, but sadly it is also the film's biggest weakness as the strange heads in there aren't funny at all just weird. However, I did like the ways in which the character was breaking the 4th wall and the ending was okay too with the headaches he is getting after smashing the mirror. Or very early on when he acts as if he had ice cream there. Now that was funny and witty, the prologue and epilogue. But the action in the middle of it all was not good at all. A close call, but I give this one a very cautious thumbs-up. Worth seeing for silent film fans.
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Tornado_Sam26 November 2017Probably one of the Segundo de Chomon's more popular efforts, "Ah! Beard" or "A Funny Shave" is a pretty comedic little film which uses both simple effects and overdone comedy to make an interesting short that for the time was quite innovative. This is one of the director's earlier films made to take away his rival's, french filmmaker Georges Méliès, market--and it's a pretty good attempt.
A man, when trying to shave, finds the shaving cream to his taste and eats some of it. This causes him to experience some weird hallucinations in the mirror--like freakish faces--and he's so scared at one point he smashes the mirror. There are quite a few interesting points to be made about this. First of all, the single viewpoint it is filmed from is quite close to the actor, which makes for a medium closeup, something somewhat rare for the time. Secondly, the actor here breaks the fourth wall quite a bit, and is rather humorous in his interactions with the viewer. Audiences in 1905 must have really laughed. Third of all, the effects (which are simplistic enough) actually tell a story that is entertaining and original, unlike what Méliès was doing at the time. Truly a step up in filmmaking and very unique for the year it was made.
One of the interesting details in the film that some people might miss is the Pathé Frères cock, which is engraved into the set at the edge of the mirror. This was done entirely for copyrighting reasons, since most film companies back in the day were used to people stealing copies of their films and releasing them to take credit for their making. Hence, to prevent this, they would hide their company's in the film to prove it was theirs--so if anyone took credit for it, they could sue them. Film company logos like this can be glimpsed in many films from the silent era, and it's interesting whenever you spot one.
The effects, of course, are obvious. When comparing the mirror with the faces in it versus the mirror reflecting the man, it's easy to see that they just substituted the actual mirror with a piece of cloth so the heads could be puppeteered through a hole from the other side of the set. The cuts themselves are seamless, and work well in achieving their goal: it's nice to see a film that doesn't try to show off its effects but using them as part of a narrative. Definite proof that even in his early years Chomón was capable of making something original. He would unfortunately fail to realize his potential for a few years yet until he began experimentation with stop-motion animation, however. -
ofpsmith25 December 2018An unnamed man is shaving when (for some reason) he decides to eat a part of his shaving cream. After this he starts seeing odd reflections in the mirror, induced by an apparent hallucination brought upon by the shaving cream. At first he only regards them with amusement, before getting annoyed, and finally destroying his mirror out of apparent fright, before hitting himself over the head as he will now have to buy another mirror. There's not much else to say, aside from it being a work of Segundo de Chomon, a pioneering Spanish filmmaker who worked in France for most of his life. Compared to de Chomon's more famous The House of Ghosts (1908) Ah! La Barbe! isn't much but for what's worth it's an amusing enough (and even creepy) two minutes.