Attempted Suicide (1906) User Reviews

Hanging Around

[boblipton · 7/10 · 30 October 2011]

It's a red letter day when one of Max Linder's lost films shows up, and this is one for me. This one turned up in the Netherland archives and while Max has the leading role, so to speak, it's not about him.

It starts as a typical Linder comedy in his man-about town mode. He gets rejected by the girl, so he lays the bouquet he has gotten for her on the stairs, sheds a tear and then .... well, he goes into the woods and hangs himself. Not what he usually does.

Nor is this the sort of hanging they aimed for when they actually hanged people, in which the idea was to make the drop and stop break the victim's neck, but the slow, strangling sort of hanging in which the victim expires slowly, twitching, A comedy? Yes indeed, because Max is discovered while there's still plenty of time to save him. It's the reactions of the people who find him that make this a comedy and a very funny one. You should see any Max Linder movie you can find, but you should see this one especially.

Wow...talk about a dark comedy!!

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 11 October 2021]

"Le Pendu" is one of comedian Max Linder's earliest films...and it is a DARK one! It's even darker when you realize that years after making this short film, Linder in real life killed himself.

The story begins with a man pledging his love to a woman and she rejects him. Despondent, he goes off to the woods to hang himself. As he's hanging, a policeman sees him....and instead of helping, he runs to tells his supervisor! When the supervisor arrives and sees the twitching guy, instead of helping, he goes to get the mayor. Only then, after many minutes have passed, does anyone bother cutting the still twitching guy down...and the ending, well, it's pretty funny.

For 1906, this is an exceptional film. It lasts about five and a half minutes (actually kind of long for the time period) and tells a decent but very dark tale. Worth seeing....and sadly ironic as well.

Sing-a-long-a-Max (Linder not Bygraves)

[kekseksa · 28 June 2018]

In 1906 Max was still not quite "Max". He was still the young ingenu that he plays in most the early films, especially those directed by Gasnier, which this may well be. But it was his most elaborate film of the year and clearly marked a stage in his career which is almost certainly why he remade the film in 1914 (writing and directing himself).

There is another rather remarkable fact about this film that permits us to understand better what the experience of film-going could be (but was not necessarily) like in 1906. All depended on the venue.

There was a well-known song called Le Pendu written sometime in the 1880s by poet and chansonnier Maurice Mac Nab about a boy who has hung himself in a forest and may yet be alive....

This is actually the song on which the film Le Penduu is based but that song was recorded for Pathé in 1906 by a music-hall artists called André Maréchal (Maréchal of the Eldorado) and was even released as a separate two-minute film with synchronised sound as a scène ciné-phonographiques, the Pathé "talkies" that were the equivalent of the Gaumont phonoscènes.

But it is clear from a review that appeared in Le Journal on 16 December 1906 that, in the Paris Pathé cinema at least, the film was accompanied by the song. The "hanging" accomplished, the "mocking voice" of the singer then accompanied the rest of the film. It sounds from the review as though Maréchal (a baritone) was actually present in the theatre and doubtless the audience were encouraged to sing along at least for the chorus. But, since the recording was also available, a similar effect could be achieved in provincial cinemas without the presence of the singer. It is very difficult for us to appreciate just how exciting and how much fun going to the cinema could be at this period.

Clearly however from the Variety review none of this additional jollification was available to US audiences who just had to enjoy he a satirical comedy. Even if the reviewer is wrong in believing the "personage" adjusting his sash is the young man's father. He isn't. He is the commissaire (it would be the "maire" nowadays) - the final link in the hierarchy that has to be informed before the unhurried rescue can be undertaken. And the reviewer is guilty of a spoiler because the audience is not really supposed to notice that "hook".

In 1906 Max was rejected for the third time by the Paris Conservatory (he had wanted to be a straight actor) and accepted finally in 1907 that he would have to settle for a career in the cinema.. In 1907 his vertiginous ascent to stardom begins in earnest..

A lost Gaumont film by Alice Guy, based on the same Mac Nab song, was also made at around the same time (the exact date is not known) but changed the story so that, instead of a folorn lover, the man who attempts suicide is driven to it by his mother-in-law constantly playing her phonograph and his scolding wife. The process of the rescue follows exactly the same pattern (although they stop to take a photo before cutting the man down) but the man is revived not by a bicycle-pump as in this film but by his diabolical mother-in-law cranking up her phonograph once more! (a full description and stills exist)