# I. La Comète Belge

## Jean Desmet's Travelling Cinema, The Imperial Bio (1907-1910)

Desmet's period as a travelling showman was a transitional phase of just two years. When compared with the twelve years he spent working on the fairgrounds, this is not very long. Compared with his period in film distribution and his time as an operator of permanent cinemas, it is a mere interlude in his career. On the other hand, these are the years that were decisive for Desmet's move to the Dutch film world. They were essential to the rapid development of his career at the beginning of the twentieth century and led directly to his establishment as a permanent cinema owner. In the end, they provided him with the opportunity to expand beyond the fairgrounds and settle into a less risky and more profitable existence. They initiate a development that was to lead him into a flirtation with the film trade that would eventually yield to a passion for property.

### I. Desmet's Debut in Dutch Film Culture

One day he was in Friesland talking to a Mr. Slikker. 'Do you know what you should do?' said Slikker. 'You should set up a cinema.' My father just muttered. No one in the Netherlands knew exactly what a cinema was. But it was a new idea, and father was a man who thought ideas were only good if they were new. He went to Belgium and France to take a look at cinema. Two months later he was appearing on the fairgrounds with the Imperial Bio.¹

A lot has been written by journalists and film historians about Desmet's early years in the Dutch film industry, although not all of this information is reliable. One myth that crops up repeatedly concerns the way Desmet made his entry into the world of film. The anecdote goes back to an interview in 1958 with Desmet's daughter, Jeanne Hughan-Desmet.

When Desmet began his travelling cinema in 1907, he was far from being the first in the business. Travelling cinemas first appeared in the Netherlands shortly after the first showing of the Lumières' films in Amsterdam on 12 March 1896. They quickly became a major fairground attraction. In the year that Desmet began his Imperial Bio, the business was experiencing a boom.
Prestigious operators of travelling cinema shows, such as Alberts Frères and Alex Benner, were making enormous profits. At the fairgrounds in the cities, a first generation of operators, among them people like Christiaan Slieker (the Mr 'Slikker' of the quotation), had been shouldered aside by a new generation prepared to make substantial investments.² The booths grew larger and were more comfortable and luxurious. Films were projected on reels, so they did not have to be retrieved from a basket after projection (as was the case with the Lumière films). Electric light replaced dangerous calcium light with its open-gas flame. 'The fairgrounds of our times are powered by steam and electricity. You see it on the carousels, the confectionery stalls and in the splendid cinema theatres [...]. The future of the fairground business belongs to big capital,' wrote the *Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad* during the summer fair of 1907.³ Slieker missed out on all these improvements and priced himself out of the market. He was also unable to compete against the enormous sums offered for fairground sites by his immediate competitors. After 1902, he was confined to working in small towns. In 1907, he gave up his travelling cinema for good.⁴ In the light of this, the story that it was Slieker who gave Desmet the idea of setting up a travelling cinema does not seem entirely convincing.⁵

In 1907, more than ten years after the Lumière shows, every Dutchman knew what 'bioscope', 'biograph' or 'cinematograph' meant. By then it had been a fairground attraction for several years. In Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, films had been shown at variety theatres and music halls since the turn of the century. From as early as 1903, complete film programmes could be seen at the Winter Garden in the Rotterdam Tivoli Complex throughout the year, except for the summer months. The first permanent cinemas appeared during the boom years of travelling cinema. Franz Anton Nöggerath's Bioscope Theater, the first purpose-built permanent cinema, was opened on Reguliersbreestraat in Amsterdam on 7 September 1907.

Desmet's decision to start up a travelling cinema may have been a personal inspiration, but he did not come to it particularly quickly. It also seems unlikely that he went to Belgium and France specially to study the culture of travelling cinema. Between the turn of the century and 1905, he had already appeared regularly at fairs in Belgium with his Wheel of Fortune. The mobile cinema theatre was already an established attraction at these fairs. In addition to this, Desmet toured all the Dutch fairgrounds from around 1900, and there too cinemas were extremely popular.

In the summer of 1907, Jean Desmet introduced the Imperial Bio Grand Cinematograph. Desmet, who up to that point had toured the fairs with his Wheel of Fortune and his 'Canadian Toboggan', a gigantic helter-skelter, could see for himself that cinema was a lucrative business. He also realised that because of the murderous competition, it would be necessary to go to
work on a grand and luxurious scale, and that a varied film programme
would be crucial. It was for this reason that he had his helter-skelter booth
converted. Typically for those days of free movement across European borders before the First World War, he had the restyling done by the German
firm of Gustav Bayerthal from a design by the Belgian Albert de Sonneville.
In addition to an electrically lit box office with an awning, entrance and exit
doors, ninety sets of chair upholstery in monogrammed plush mohair (for
the best seats), wall coverings in Utrecht velvet and stage curtains, Desmet
ordered a 'white projection screen, framed and backed in black'.⁶ Bayerthal
came to the Netherlands himself to ensure that everything was ready and in
place for the Leiden fair in July 1907. The Leiden fair of July 1907 was probably
Desmet's first film presentation, although there was no mention of it in
the local press.

Dutch fairgrounds at the beginning of the twentieth century

There was no shortage of fairs in the summer of 1907. From May to Septem-
ber there was a fair in progress in pretty well every Dutch city except Amster-
dam. The municipality of Amsterdam had banned fairs in 1876 because of the
anarchy and excess that accompanied them.⁷ Rotterdam too would experi-
ence its last official fair in 1908 for the same reason. Desmet's brother was
present at this fair with his dance hall (Fig. 3).⁸ Leiden was to follow the ex-
ample of Amsterdam and Rotterdam in 1911.⁹ For many people, fairs were
events at which they could let themselves go, like the carnivals in the south of
the country. Large amounts of money changed hands during the fair. The
cafés took enormous sums during fair weeks and the newspapers were
constantly filled with reports of police arrests of hopelessly drunk men and
women. Fairs were the occasion of quarrels and adultery, and violence was
hardly exceptional.

The attitude of many municipal authorities towards the fairs was ambiva-
lent. On the one hand, they saw them as a threat to public order. On the other
hand, they brought in a bit of money. Licences for sites for the popular and
large attractions such as steam-driven carousels and travelling cinemas were
sold by tender. The rental fees certainly came in handy. In 1907, for example,
the municipality of Deventer received f1,000 in rent for Alex Benner's travel-
ling cinema. Things were even more extreme in Haarlem. In 1907, the cine-
matograph owner Willem Lohoff offered f1,620 for a cinema booth on the
Market Square which was topped by an offer of f2,257 (f45,140 or €20,520 in
2000) from his competitors Alberts Frères.¹⁰ Considering that the average ad-
mission price to the travelling cinema at a fair was a mere few cents, this
gives some idea of the turnover possible on the fairgrounds, and of the sums
<figure><img src="image_1.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 3. Ferdinand Desmet's dance hall at the Rotterdam fair, 1908</figcaption></figure>

the generally less well-off were apparently spending there. Municipalities were keen to profit from the cut-throat competition. Wealthy travelling showmen like Benner and the Mullens brothers offered to pay rents several years in advance in order to guarantee themselves sites at the most popular fairs. Offers of this kind were generally disregarded by the municipalities, since leasing by the year was clearly more lucrative. Obtaining a lease for a term of years meant peace of mind and security for the operator and the avoidance of competition for sites. Due to the unpredictability of profits from a fair, however, operators were generally cautious. Not every fair was a guaranteed success, and not every attraction did as well one year as the next.

Leaving to one side the question of whether it had been created by the commercial calculations of the municipalities or by popular demand, there was a great demand for fairs at the beginning of the last century, and this is underlined by the many additional fairs held around the official ones. In Dutch provincial cities such as Groningen, Leiden and Amersfoort, fairs were held once a year, usually in the summer. They generally lasted for a week or ten days. Some cities held fairs several times a year. The fairgrounds of those days were set out quite differently from today. They were not just a place for
attractions such as carousels, shooting galleries, swing boats and doughnut stalls, but also of hippodromes (where you could have a ride on a horse), menageries (containing snakes and various other sinister creatures), performing cats, magic cows, female giants weighing 400 pounds, wrestlers, magicians, panoramas, photography tents and travelling cinemas.

The fair was also an occasion for lavish entertainments such as theatre and music halls. In both the local theatres and the back rooms of cafés, and in specially constructed marquee on the fairgrounds, the plays of Herman Heijermans and French comedies were performed by well-known companies from Amsterdam or Rotterdam, or by theatre groups from the region. Equally popular were the so-called speciality programmes and revues put on by impresarios and variety companies, such as those of Vleugels, Frits van Haarlem and Henri Ter Hall. Finally, there were the cafés that organised special cabaret acts. The newspapers contained daily articles on the theatre and variety programmes and (to a lesser extent) the condition of the fairground site.¹¹

The theatrical and variety offerings were on a somewhat smaller scale at the fairs in cities such as Leiden and Amersfoort, but throughout the Netherlands the press focused on the theatre and music hall in its coverage of fairs. The fair itself was not always mentioned, as certain newspapers considered it too trivial. The smaller the town, the greater the chance that the fair would get a mention. In this context, it is interesting to note that the attractions that were written up tended to be those advertised in the paper by the operator. If you did not advertise, you were quietly ignored. This makes it difficult to reconstruct Desmet's activities as a travelling cinema operator, as he did not advertise automatically at every place he visited or in the daily newspapers of every regional town or village. In some cases he evidently found other forms of publicity, such as flyers and posters, sufficient for his needs.¹²

## The culture of travelling cinema: Alberts Frères and Alex Benner

Who were Desmet's colleagues, and what kind of a tradition was he stepping into? The Mullens brothers, who called themselves and their attraction 'Alberts Frères' after their father Albert Mullens, were less frugal than Desmet and more vigorously self-promoting.¹³ Around 1907, theirs was the most lavish and imposing travelling cinema (Fig. 4). Their tent had an austerely classical cinema façade, which made it appear more like a temple than a fairground booth. Between 1905 and 1907, its size increased from 240 to 544 square metres (Slieker's booth, by comparison, was a mere 128 square metres). The length of their shows increased from two to three hours over the same period.¹⁴ The cinema, the programme and the film commentaries (performed by Willy Mullens himself) were intended to create an impression of cultivation. The Mul-
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 4. The Mullens brothers' travelling cinema</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 5. The Mullens brothers with their mother, c. 1900, Willy (left), Albert (right with camera)</figcaption></figure>
lens brothers placed great emphasis on education as well as entertainment. The whole family had to be able to attend their shows. Coarse humour was out.

The Mullens gained a reputation not only for the atmosphere they created, but also for the varied character of their programmes, which included early sound films (the so-called 'talking pictures') as well as coloured films. Electric lights hung on the roof and the front of their booth forming the letters 'Alberts Frères' Talking Cinema'. The talking film was a film combined with gramophone records. For the most part, the latter consisted of operatic arias or popular songs sung by French performers such as Gauthier and Dranem, or of short recitals by stars of the French theatre such as Sarah Bernhardt and Coquelin. The Mullens brothers themselves produced short film comedies and made actualities. They had a mobile dark room in which they developed their own films. Generally, they would film people coming out of the local churches near the fairgrounds and the pictures would be screened in their auditorium a day later, sometimes the same evening.

Between 1905 and 1908, the Mullens, who had already been in business shortly before the turn of the century under names such as Alberts' Electro Talking Cinema and the Alberts' Cineograph, were responsible for a substantial increase in the status of the medium of film and the phenomenon of cinema in the Netherlands and Belgium. At the beginning of the last century, they were the dominant presence at fairgrounds in almost all the large and medium-sized Dutch and Belgian cities. In the years 1906-8, they put on annual open-air performances at the Market Place in Groningen outside the fair season. In cities such as The Hague, Maastricht and Nymegen they were to be seen on the fair every year between 1900 and 1910.¹⁵ They made enormous profits. In 1906 a Haarlem newspaper reported:

> Alberts Frères, who have been presenting cinema shows here at the fairground made a small sum of f16,000 during fair week. Deductions include f6,000 for transportation from Belgium of the booth, wagons etc, wages for personnel, food and other expenses, leaving a profit of f10,000.¹⁶

Willy and Albert Mullens (Fig. 5) were shrewd businessmen. They sidestepped their competitors by getting hold of sites outside the fair season, and by acquiring exclusive rights of film exhibition during these periods from city authorities.¹⁷ With their so-called gala performances, they managed to tempt the urban middle classes into the cinema. The wealthier classes were willing to pay the substantially increased admission prices in exchange for the absence of the poorer classes of filmgoers. Other cinema owners also put on gala or 'elite' performances of this kind.
It was during the period when the Mullens brothers were spending a lot of time in Belgium that a second travelling showman arrived on the scene. Alex Benner came from a genuine fairground background. He was the youngest son of the fairground operator Karel Benner, who had already toured with a cinema around the turn of the century. In 1901, Alex Benner opened a so-called Palais Lumineux or Crystal Palace of Light, which created a visual spectacle from coloured electric lighting. The Palais Lumineux was later converted into a cinema.¹⁸ From around 1904 his travelling cinema could be seen all over the Netherlands, and he clearly filled the number two spot after Alberts Frères. In 1906, 1907, 1908 and 1911, he even managed to grab the site at Den Bosch where Desmet had his operational base. Desmet's network of contacts was unable to do anything about this. Outside the fair season, Benner also put on shows regularly in rented halls. He owed his popularity to his varied and up-to-date programmes and also, like the Mullens, to his sound films. For a while, his cinema was also called 'Benner's Talking Cinema "No-blesse"'.¹⁹ With a frontage of 27 metres and a depth of ten, Benner's booth in 1907 was a little smaller than that of Alberts Frères.²⁰

Although the Mullens and Benner were certainly Desmet's most formidable competitors, they must all have been well acquainted with each other in those days. When Desmet's wife died, he heard of the despatch of two wreaths inscribed by fairground operators whose names appear repeatedly in the press of these years. They included Willem Stuvé, H. Wolfs, J. Kunkels, Gerard Richter and Alex Benner. The Mullens also sent Desmet a cable. Furthermore, Desmet showed films by Alberts Frères in his travelling cinema, but more on this subject below.²¹

## 2. Lutte pour la Vie: Jean Desmet on the Fairground

Jean Conrad Ferdinand Theodore Desmet was born on 26 August 1875 in Ixelles, now a suburb of Brussels, at 73 Rue du Bourgmestre.²² He was the eldest son of a poor and numerous family. His father, Maréchal Desmet, the son of a trader from Renaix (Ronse) in Belgium, had settled in Den Bosch. His mother, Petronella, was a woman of humble origins from Oss. Maréchal Desmet had been a cavalry trooper in the Dutch Army, but he left the service when he married in 1874.²³ The family seems to have lived only a short time in Ixelles, for the birth of a second son, Ferdinand, was entered in the register at Den Bosch in 1877. After this the Desmets settled in Leopoldsburg just across the Belgian border, where their eldest daughter Rosine was born in 1879. They later moved permanently to Dorpstraat in Den Bosch, where the
other children were born: Ursula (1881), Henriëtte (1883), Mathijs (1886), Theo (1888) and Frederik (1890).²⁴ With the help of family connections in Gent, Maréchal Desmet started a Flemish cloth business, but it ended in failure.²⁵ He died in 1893, unemployed and destitute.

When their mother also died a year later, the Desmet children spent some time an orphanage, except for the eldest son, Jean, who was given the job of providing for his siblings.²⁶ This task determined the shape of his career for years to come. He would help them to stand on their own feet, either on the fairground or by setting them up in cafés and cinemas. In 1896, he married Catharina Dahrs, a lady from Nymegen whose family was originally German, and started a family of his own.²⁷ He moved house several times in Den Bosch but continued to live there.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Den Bosch (Fig. 6) was a town whose population had risen so sharply that living conditions had suffered a dramatic deterioration. The population of the old fortress town had climbed from 13,000 in 1814 to 30,000 in 1899. In 1900, almost a fifth of the town's housing supply still consisted of one-room flats, the majority of which were occupied by two or more persons. Two-room flats still made up one-third of the housing stock.²⁸ The drinking water remained bad until the 1880s. The water from the town's pumps was largely polluted due to contamination of the earth by

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 6. Den Bosch, c. 1900, with De Laat's café 'De Geldersche Wagen' in the background</figcaption></figure>
excrement.²⁹ Throughout the nineteenth century the area around Den Bosch was regularly subjected to flooding when the rivers rose, and the town itself continued to be affected until the end of the 1880s. It was also regularly visited by epidemics of cholera and smallpox. All of this made Den Bosch one of the unhealthiest places in the Netherlands.³⁰ The lack of land for building kept rents high. A worker's flat cost between 75 cents and 1 guilder a week, with the average weekly wage for a worker scarcely rising above 5 guilders. Profiteers erected jerry-built blocks of flats, which often lacked sewers and running water. Only the rack-renters did well from the rapid population growth.³¹ Owing to poor nutrition, mainly just potatoes, gruel and the cheapest kind of rye bread, many people were permanently malnourished. Food, however, consumed the greater part of people's wages, leaving little over for rent and clothing. It was hardly surprising that people had all kinds of other jobs on the side, such as outwork and small-scale business. Much of the petty street trading of the nineteenth century was basically a front for begging.³² Yet even the most poverty-stricken were ready to part with their money twice a year during the February carnival or at the September fair. Household possessions, clothes and even houses were pawned to provide a flow of cash for these festivities.

After her husband's death, Desmet's mother had been forced by her circumstances to travel round the fairs peddling chinaware and pottery, and Jean helped her with this. When she died too, he had no choice but to find work on the fairgrounds. Unlike Alex Benner, Desmet did not come from a family that had made its living from the fairgrounds for generations. It became a family business. When Jean Desmet began to travel the fairgrounds, he took other family members with him, besides his own immediate family. His brother-in-law Jan Dekkers and his wife, for example, became his permanent assistants. When they were old enough, Desmet's children, Catharina (1898) and Maréchal (1899), were sent to boarding schools at Huijbergen and Essen in Belgium, and only travelled with their parents during the school holidays.³³ Desmet's eldest brother Ferdinand also took to the fairgrounds, where his attraction was a dance hall. In 1897, he married Maria Herregodts, the offspring of a family of fairground operators in Roermond, where he lived until 1910. His brother Mathijs, who became a baker's assistant, lived with him from 1901 to 1906.³⁴ He too would later travel around with a dance hall for a time. Their eldest sister Rosine ran a café with an adjoining dance hall on Zandstraat in Rotterdam, one of the seedier districts of the city.

Desmet's wife died at a young age in September 1907 during the Leiden fair. She was just thirty years old.³⁵ It was around this time, at the fair in Haarlem, that Jean Desmet first met Rika (Hendrika) Klabou, the daughter of a café proprietor on Grote Houtstraat.³⁶ Rika ran the box office at Desmet's
travelling cinema for at least two years. They married in 1912 and had a daughter, Jeanne.

## Wheel of Fortune

After the period during which he helped his mother – up to 1894 – Jean Desmet appeared at the fair with street organs (Fig. 7). This attraction was presumably supplemented in 1897 by his Wheel of Fortune.37 The earliest advertisement for this dates from 1901. By that time, Desmet was appearing at the fair in his home town of Den Bosch with his ‘Great Wonder Wheel of Fortune’.38 He travelled with a booth measuring 15 metres by 4. Once all the tickets had been sold, the crowd would throw darts at the wheel and try to hit the winning numbers.39 The prizes awarded to the winners included household and luxury articles such as mirrors, paintings, clocks, crockery, vases, tea services, birdcages, bronze pitchers, tea-tables, chairs and stands. At this point Desmet still owned street organs made by the internationally known firms of Gasparini and Gavioli.40 In those days, the arrival of the fair and its attractions

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 7. Desmet pictured next to one of his street organs</figcaption></figure>
was typically announced by a procession of barrel organs through the streets of the town, and Desmet probably kept his organs for this purpose.

J.C. de Laat, the owner of the hotel-café De Geldersche Wagen on the Market Square in Den Bosch, kept his eye on the homefront for Desmet. In February 1904, De Laat reported, among other 'faits divers' on the Den Bosch 'scène', that this year '100 rix-dollars [f250] have been offered for a cinematograph.'⁴¹ This referred to a bid for a site at the Den Bosch fair by travelling showman Antoon Wegkamp. The 'bioscope' or 'cinematograph', as the travelling cinema was called, had become a profitable business; for the operator himself, certainly, but also for the municipalities who were banking steadily rising rents. For the time being, however, Desmet merely took note of De Laat's hint.

De Laat also hired out Desmet's street organs to third parties. In a sense, Desmet was acting as a distributor here long before he went into film distribution. With his café as his base, De Laat negotiated terms with the fairground artistes who wanted to hire Desmet's organs. Another member of Desmet's network was De Laat's acquaintance J.B. Krekel, a journalist who worked on a daily newspaper called *De Gelderlander*. As a journalist, Krekel had access to the dignitaries of several municipalities, which enabled him to act as Desmet's mediator in his pursuit of fairground sites for his Wheel of Fortune. Sites were very much in demand at this time and difficult to obtain.⁴² Meanwhile, Desmet toured the Netherlands and Belgium with the Wheel of Fortune.⁴³ Between the autumn of 1902 and the summer of 1904, he appeared regularly in Brussels, Gent, Sint Niklaas and Antwerp, sometimes remaining in Belgium for several months with his 'Grande Lotterie Hollandaise'. In the Netherlands he covered the whole country, appearing in large cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Nijmegen and Tilburg, as well as in small provincial villages in remote parts of the country.

## The 'Canadian Toboggan'

In early July 1905 Desmet's wife, who was in Leeuwarden – probably looking after the Wheel of Fortune at the fairground – was summoned before the Chief Constable and informed that in accordance with article 3 of the Lottery Law of July 1905, this attraction had been banned from fairs.⁴⁴ Desmet's site permits for both Leeuwarden and Apeldoorn were cancelled in accordance with the ban.⁴⁵ Desmet reacted quickly, and his network came to his aid. On 7 August, De Laat wrote to tell him that 'L. Benner is selling one of those toboggans or helter-skelters as they are called. But your brother has just been here and asks me to tell you that there are probably opportunities for a thing like that in Rotterdam as well as in Tilburg.'⁴⁶ Desmet did not hesitate and
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 8. The ‘Canadian Toboggan’ at the Haarlem fair, 1906</figcaption></figure>

bought the helter-skelter from Laurent Benner, a brother of Alex Benner’s. From Alexandre Devos in Ghent, who, according to his letterhead, was a supplier of complete and ready-painted wooden facades for fairground booths, he ordered new flooring for the helter-skelter. From photographs in the Desmet Collection, it appears that the helter-skelter itself had also been made by Devos. Devos travelled up and down to Rotterdam where Desmet was preparing to launch his ‘Canadian Toboggan’ (Fig. 8).

Meanwhile, Desmet negotiated with other operators for sites for helter-skelters. He bought a site from Tewe at the fairground in Den Bosch and another from Henri Grünkorn in Zaandam, his first port of call after Rotterdam.47 In the following years, Desmet’s helter-skelter appeared in The Hague, Deventer and Haarlem. He regularly went to The Hague in May for
the 'Spring Festival' in the city's zoo. The 'toboggan' was described as the number-one attraction at the 1907 fair in the newspaper *Het Vaderland*:⁴⁸

An ingenious contraption and as simple as the egg of Columbus. It is nothing more than a gantry concealed behind a lavishly decorated facade with a stair-case winding round it. From the top two chutes, panelled in cane, zigzag downwards. The fun is the giddy descent. But it's a stiff ascent. You could compare it with letting your capital grow. To reach your aim, you have to clamber up laboriously, step by step. But the descent is an effortless, crazy, thrilling, intoxicating whirl.

For a while, helter-skelters were an extremely popular fairground attraction. With their bulk and height, they towered above the rest of the fair, looking rather like church steeples or, more precisely, lighthouses. For Desmet's helter-skelter was equipped with electric lighting, which stood out above the attractions below, illuminating the entire fairground. Desmet used a steam engine to generate the power required for his lights. In most Dutch towns of those years there was still no central public electricity supply. Urban distribution networks were actually established in the course of Desmet's years as a travelling showman. In so far as it existed before then, electricity was often owned by private concerns and not freely available to all. The fairground operators brought their own power to the fairs, so Desmet actually had electricity before he began his travelling cinema.

Dutch cities were places of darkness in the nineteenth century: 'after nightfall, the city was enveloped in absolute gloom', writes Dutch historian Geert Mak in *Amsterdam. A Brief Life of the City*.⁴⁹ The sea of light in which the fair was bathed exerted a magnetic attraction, and the colour of the lights only enhanced its magic. Electricity performed practical tasks such as powering carousels, but it was also important as a crowd-pulling adornment and diversion in its own right. Although the fairgrounds might sometimes do only average business during the day, even at weekends, they would be thronging with visitors when the lights came on in the evening.

## First film shows combined with the Canadian Toboggan

Desmet seems to have been planning a travelling cinema from the end of 1906, for on 17 December 1906 he offered f1,130 for a booth with a 'cinematograph' at the fair in Den Bosch. But he was first seen on a fairground with his cinema at the Leiden fair of July 1907.⁵⁰

Desmet was soon back in Leiden for the so-called 'kermesse d'été' or 'summer charity fête' in September of 1907. This time his film projections
were discussed in the press, although the performance itself was no more
than a one-off event. In August 1907, he was also in Haarlem, Rotterdam and
Alkmaar, though probably only with the helter-skelter. It is unclear whose
helter-skelter was used in Alkmaar, but in Haarlem Desmet advertised his
fairground attraction exactly as in the previous year when he took it there for
the first time.⁵¹ Photographs of the toboggan taken at the Butter Market dur-
ing the Haarlem fair of August 1906 show that its entrance was an outer wall
that would later be the basis of the facade of Desmet's travelling cinema.⁵²

Between the Haarlem and Alkmaar fairs Desmet appeared for four days
at the penultimate Rotterdam fair from Saturday 17 August to Tuesday 20
August. In his correspondence with the city about payment of local taxes, he
claimed that business had been bad for him during the fair and that he had
taken only f600.⁵³ One reason for these poor attendances might be that the
fair had, in fact, ended on Saturday 17 August, but they were probably due to
Desmet's meagre press advertising. He had placed no advertisements in the
Rotterdam press, so his attraction was ignored in return.⁵⁴ No one knew who
he was or what he was about. His attitude contrasted sharply with the Mul-
lens brothers, who often advertised for several days in succession in the press
of the cities in which they appeared, and were duly rewarded with plenty of
editorial attention. Desmet learned his lesson. From his September 1907 ap-
pearance in Leiden onwards, he advertised regularly in the local press, albeit
not yet under the name 'Imperial Bio'.

On Thursday 12 September, there was a so-called 'cinema in the clouds' at the Leiden fair. From eleven o'clock in the evening, films were projected for forty-five minutes on a white screen erected behind the helter-skelter. The projector was connected to the current supplying the helter-skelter:

> There was no question of clouds, for the sky was beautifully bright and full of stars. Unless the words referred to the clouds of steam billowing from the engine of the Toboggan! They, however, did not remain in existence long enough to be projected upon. The audience was ushered behind and to the side of the tent and there were a lot of people standing on the 'tower' of the Toboggan; highly elevated observers of the exhibition down below.⁵⁵

Nowhere was it mentioned that this film projection was Desmet's work. The
advertisements described him only as the operator of the helter-skelter.
Given the combination of film projection and toboggan, however, it seems
likely that he also organised the film screenings. For a while, Desmet offered
both attractions at the fairs. Even later on, when his travelling cinema had be-
come more important, the helter-skelter still regularly appeared at fairs. It
was such a money-spinner that he operated it together with his cinema.
When other travelling showmen such as Alberts Frères and Benner beat him in the race for space at the fair, he could sometimes still manage to secure a site for his helter-skelter.⁵⁶ Unlike the travelling cinema, which was always very widely publicised, the helter-skelter was hardly ever advertised. This makes it difficult to establish how long Desmet continued with it, or whether it was incidental or essential to his cinematograph operations. It was still there in 1908, next to the Imperial Bio at the Groningen fair, where, according to the press, it was a very popular attraction. ' Towering above the other booths stands the 'Canadian Toboggan', that funny slide, down which young and old valiantly hurl themselves in high-spirited amusement. You see an almost unbroken line of enthusiasts clambering up the narrow spiral staircase before hurtling down at a rare rate of knots.'⁵⁷ The toboggan was probably still standing next to the Imperial Bio at the Delft fair in August 1909.⁵⁸

### 3. The Imperial Bio Grand Cinematograph

Frank van der Maden has described Desmet's reasons for changing from the helter-skelter to the travelling cinema: 'The risk of physical injury attached to this kind of fun led a number of local authorities to ban helter-skelters. Thus, Desmet was forced for a second time to give up one profitable attraction and find another.'⁵⁹ But perhaps this switch to a more lucrative attraction was deliberate. The sum of f1,130 that Desmet offered for a site on the fairground at Den Bosch towards the end of 1906, and the reports of the huge profits that the Mullens brothers were making at that time, would support this. The capital investment was certainly greater, but the yields were proportionately higher. However, his travelling cinema was not an unqualified success. Desmet was not continuously busy with film screenings during his time as a cinema owner. The Dutch public was possibly enjoying a surfeit of film shows.⁶⁰ Both during and outside the fair season, 1907 was a record year for film presentations. The Mullens and Benner were the most popular exhibitors with both the press and the public. They had the largest and most elegant booths, showed the most recent films, produced more of their own material than anyone else and advertised more often and on the grandest scale. They monopolised the big fairs and the auditoria in large cities during the winter months. In this struggle for survival, Desmet had to work hard to establish a niche for himself. Advertising was an absolute must.

It took a little time before Desmet began to place press advertisements for his new fairground attraction. In October 1907, a month after his 'cinema in the sky' at Leiden, he appeared at the fair in Wageningen with both the cine-
ma and the toboggan.⁶¹ This time his show was introduced as 'The Imperial Bio Grand Cinematograph'. From Saturday 12 October, he was at the Bowles Park for the Wageningen 'Public Welfare Festival'. The town of Wageningen was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of its Society of Public Welfare.

Desmet probably used the name the Imperial Bio Grand Cinematograph for the first time in Wageningen. It was not original. In 1902, the Belgian traveling showman Willem F. Krüger bought Henri Grünkorn's travelling cinema and renamed it 'Imperial Bio' in 1903. He toured it successfully in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. In 1907, he actually owned two travelling cinemas and had several other cinema operators working for him. On 29 November 1907 he opened the first cinema in Antwerp on Keijzerlei. Could Desmet possibly have been thinking of Krüger when he christened his own cinema in 1907? He had probably seen Krüger's attraction during one of his frequent visits to Belgium with the wheel of fortune. This may explain why Desmet never took his cinema to Belgium, for Krüger's cinema was still on the road there when Desmet launched his.

In a Europe that was still almost completely dominated by royal dynasties, the predicate 'royal' or 'imperial' in the name of a cinema was considered 'good form' by many owners, both in the Netherlands and abroad. In the Netherlands, Franz Anton Nöggerath's film shows were called 'The Royal Bioscope' after the brand name of the projection equipment he bought from Charles Urban. Carmine Riozzi's cinema was known as 'Riozzi's Imperator Bioscope'. The term 'Grand Cinematograph' was also hardly exclusive. Desmet used it, as did his competitor Willem Lohoff.

It is interesting that, unlike the Mullens and Benner, Desmet did not name his cinema after himself. He seems not to have considered it vital to have his own name associated with his attraction. The name of his cinema was more important than his own. He certainly went in for a little self-glorification by advertising himself as 'L'Empereur du Bioscope', which was a dig at the Mullens brothers, who promoted themselves as 'Les Rois des Bioscopes'. Others too went in for superlatives of this kind. In England, where a lot of travelling cinema owners called themselves 'Captain' or 'Colonel', George Kemp, one of the biggest operators, promoted himself as 'President Kemp'.⁶²

Desmet sensed that if he was going to be able to compete with the others, he would have to come up with something special. His first priority here was his cinema booth. The facade was an enormous length of frontage painted with motifs in an art-nouveau style, which had already been used on his helter-skelter. When he ordered a film screen from Bayerthal in the summer of
1907, he had his facade redecorated at the same time. The Belgian Albert de Sonneville, who had earlier designed the shape and structure of the facade itself, provided the decorations.⁶³

The front of the Imperial Bio was 25 metres long, and the marquee behind it was 10.5 metres deep. Assuming that the marquee was the same length as the facade, the floor area would have been more than 260 square metres.⁶⁴ Desmet's travelling film theatre was thus twice as big as Slieker's, about the same size as Benner's, but only half the size of the booth of Alberts Frères. Both the interior and exterior of the Imperial Bio attracted the attention of the press, though the interior received more detailed coverage. The *Leidsch Dagblad* described a 'brightly coloured and brilliantly lit booth', referring to the exterior electric lighting that drew the eye towards the box office at the centre of the facade.⁶⁵ 'I'm lighting the whole site', wrote Desmet, and this included the floodlighting of the helter-skelter next to the cinema.⁶⁶ The lavish scale and stylish art-nouveau design of the facade were hardly noted in the press. Perhaps the design was not so revolutionary for its time; perhaps Dutch audiences were not so taken with Belgian art nouveau. The wooden carving of the

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 9. The Imperial Bio at the Groningen fair, 1908, with Desmet's luxury caravan (far right)</figcaption></figure>
frames is reminiscent of the architecture of Victor Horta and Gustave Strau-
ven.⁶⁷ A photograph of the Imperial Bio taken on the Market Square in Gro-
ningen in May 1908 shows all the details of the façade (Fig. 9). The cashier –
possibly Rika Klabou – can be seen at the centre under the lettering of the
Imperial Bio, with Jean Desmet himself to her left, leaning against a post. To
the left of the picture, one of the Gasparini organs is visible, and to the right
the steam engine that produced the electricity. Bottom-right are hoardings
with film posters, and on the far right of the picture is Desmet’s caravan. A
row of arc lights hangs from the facade. Between the exotic, floral motifs of
the frames are paintings of idyllic landscapes and allegorical figures.⁶⁸

In contrast to other cinemas, which made do with an attractive facade, the
interior of Desmet’s travelling film theatre was opulently appointed, and it
was this that most people wrote about. It is sometimes hard to distinguish be-
tween editorial enthusiasm and promotional hype in these reviews, and it is
not unlikely that Desmet wrote them himself. The slogans from his advertise-
ments were sometimes reproduced word for word and incorporated into the
reviews. Other press notices dwelt at length on the booth and the pro-
grammes, as well as the projection, music and commentaries. Some criticisms
are open to various interpretations, but on the whole, the responses were ex-
tremely positive:

Generally speaking, the most attractive feature of these constructions is the exteri-
or; but here the interior is equally splendid. A long, high and therefore airy hall —
'tent' hardly seems a suitable word anymore — with fine velvet walls and even
emergency exits; very comfortable chairs and, in the better rows at least, a wooden
floor, so you are not sitting on the cobblestones. As for the films, they are the best
available: well projected and supplied with good commentaries. The unavoidable
intervals [for reel changes, IB] are creditably filled by a pianist and a violinist.⁶⁹

This was printed in the *Amersfoortsche Courant* when Desmet appeared in the
city in October 1907. When The Imperial Bio came to Zeist in August/Sep-
tember 1909, the local press wrote:

And now a special word for 'The Imperial Bio', one of the most striking booths on
the fairground. We single it out because what director Jean Desmet offers is more
worthy of a visit than any of the other things you will find at the fair night after
night. This theatre-marquee is indeed 'furnished according to the demands of the
times', and in quoting the words of the leaflet we are not just echoing the adver-
tisements, since we have experienced it for ourselves. The interior looks splendid.
The oblong hall, with russet velvet drapery as sidewalls, creates a splendid effect.
The best seats are upholstered in blue velvet and, although a little less luxurious,
the other seats are good and solid. The biggest difference lies in the location of the seats themselves. Seen from close up, the 'flickers' [a common word for motion pictures at the time, IB] are always tiring on the eye, but the beauty of the living images is appreciably enhanced the further back you are seated.⁷⁰

Desmet did not live in a caravan all the time, but when he was at the fair, he would spend the night in his chic 'lounge car' (Fig. 10). This was not so much a caravan as a work of art, an expensive luxury item, and a considerable status symbol for Desmet. Desmet was already promoting it in 1906, when he was still touring his helter-skelter, but from 1908 he regularly included it in his press advertising.⁷¹ Just like his booth, De Sonneville decorated it in the art-nouveau style. The periodical *De Prins* published a picture of the lounge car in its edition of 25 April 1908, which was accompanied by the following description:

> We have often seen pictures of the gigantic automobiles and caravans owned by rich Americans and Englishmen. They are equipped with every imaginable luxury and comfort, and it must be wonderful to travel around the world in them. In this edition, we publish a picture of the luxury caravan owned by Mr. Desmet, a cinema owner from Den Bosch. The vehicle is ten metres long, with cut-glass windows mounted in modern mahogany frames. The roof has ventilation windows. The interior consists of a drawing room, sleeping quarters and a bathroom, and everything is equipped for gas and electricity. The whole interior is finished in solid mahogany from designs by Albert De Sonneville, who also painted the ceiling. There is even a piano and a library in the drawing room. The whole carriage cost more than 12,000 guilders, and it is bound to attract a lot of interest in the various places visited by the owner with his cinema.⁷²

In an advertisement for the Imperial Bio in Groningen a month later, Desmet announced that visitors to the fair were welcome to view the lounge car and referred them to the photograph in *De Prins*.⁷³ He mentioned with some pride that the vehicle had been exhibited at the World Fair in Liège. In the autumn of 1908 and the following summer in Zeist and Delft, he again included it as one of his attractions. In Zeist, he actually advertised it separately. It could be viewed for ten cents.⁷⁴ Considering the amount he paid for it, Desmet must have made quite a lot of money by this time. However, the pennies may have come in handy for paying his bills.⁷⁵
<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 10. Interior of Desmet's luxury caravan, with his Bechstein piano (left)</figcaption></figure>

In the years 1907-9, Desmet was a constant presence at the fairs from May to October. During the winter months, he showed films in rented auditoria. These were normally places used for concerts or plays, but they could be rented for film shows too. In his first winter season with the Imperial Bio, Desmet put on December shows in the 'Ober-Bayern' Concert Hall in Sittard and Geenen's Concert Hall in Helmond, and in February and March 1908 he appeared at the concert hall of the Royal Glee Club 'Souvenir des Montagnards' in Tilburg. Despite the actual absence of the cinema booth, he continued to advertise these indoor shows in the press as performances of 'The Imperial Bio'. The name was therefore not necessarily tied to his fairground film booth. In the winter of 1908-09, he again toured the halls with the Imperial Bio, appearing in the upper room of the Café Suisse in Zaandam in November 1908 and in the main auditorium of the Casino Association in Den Bosch in February 1909.⁷⁶

In addition to the concert halls and fairs, the Imperial Bio appeared at the so-called 'kermesses d'été' or 'charity fêtes'. Outside the winter indoor period
and the annual spring or summer season on the fairground, exhibitors seized every opportunity to tour such 'kermesses d'été'. As noted above, Desmet was at the Public Welfare Festival in Wageningen, but he was also to be seen at the festival section of the agricultural fair at Apeldoorn (August 1908) and at the horticultural show at Zeist (August-September). Summer was not only a season for the fairgrounds, but also for all kinds of exhibitions and national festivals. Exhibitions were all the rage, although the Netherlands still lacked permanent buildings for trade fairs and exhibitions. The kermesses d'été were often devoted to charitable causes, but the profits were also used to cover the costs incurred in putting them on. Furthermore, both regionalism and nationalism were nourished by the centenary celebrations of cities, guilds and societies, as well as by events such as quinquennial university fes- tivities. Films of functions of this kind, made by producers such as Alberts Frères, later became popular items on Desmet's programmes. DELFTSCHE LUS- TRUMFEESTEN (LUSTRUM FESTIVITIES IN DELFT*, Alberts Frères 1908), a record of the celebrations at the University of Delft in June 1908, appeared regularly at the Imperial Bio between the summers of 1908 and 1909. Desmet's cine- matograph and helter-skelter were also featured on their own at the Inter- national Fair of Advertising in Arnhem (August 1908).⁷⁷

Desmet was careful to show respect for the environment in which his at- traction was set up, which earned him a good reputation with the press and the local establishment, in addition to boosting his clientele. When he put in at Amersfoort, he came up against the extremely active and influential Amersfoort Temperance Committee. The committee had its work cut out dealing with the drink problem, for the *Amersfoortsche Courant* contained reg- ular reports of people who had been run in for drunkenness, particularly when women were involved. The committee praised Desmet for his help at the place of evil:

> By agreement with Mr. Desmet, words of wisdom from the Committee Against Al- cohol are projected onto the screen during each break between numbers, while the whole house sits waiting expectantly for the treats to come: 'Avoid trouble, don't take a double. Drink's the curse that makes everything worse – and on comes the hearse.' Or 'Women and girls, join together in the fight against alcoholism. You are in a position to exert a good influence.' It is nice to see the audience reading good advice of this kind. Truly, the temperance committee misses no opportunity of promoting the good cause.⁷⁸

Desmet's programmes too were sometimes designed with an eye to their location. LUSTRUM FESTIVITIES IN DELFT, for example, was shown at the Delft fair a year after its release, and the screening of REIS LANGS DE BLOEMBOLLEN-
VELDEN TE HAARLEM (A TOUR OF THE BULB FIELDS OF HAARLEM*, Alberts Frères 1909) at the Zeist horticultural show was again hardly coincidental (Colour Plate 1). Films such as DOOPPLECHTIGHEID VAN H.K.H. PRINSES JULIANA (THE CHRISTENING OF HER ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCESS JULIANA*, Alberts Frères 1909), BEZOEK VAN DEN DUITSCHEN KEIZER TE MIDDACHTEN (THE GERMAN KAISER'S VISIT TO MIDDACHTEN*, Nöggerath 1908) and Ontvangst van het bestuurbare luchtschip 'Zepelin III' door Z.M. den Keizer van Duitsland (Reception for the Airship 'Zeppelin III' by His Majesty The Kaiser of Germany, possibly a Messter production) were all shown at Zeist and undoubtedly went down well at a society event like the horticultural show, which was under the patronage of Emma, the Queen Mother, and the Royal Consort, Prince Hendrik.

Desmet probably never took the Imperial Bio to Belgium. According to the Belgian fairground trade journal, *La Comète belge*, the only Dutch cinema operators to appear in Belgium in the period 1907-10 were Alberts Frères and Carmine Riozzi, whose operating base (Breda) was close to the Belgian border.⁷⁹ Nonetheless, Desmet’s advertisements always gave Belgium as the location of his head office. At Zeist, for example, he billed himself as ‘the director of the world-renowned Cinéma from Brussels’. But superlatives and exaggerations are legion in the world of travelling cinema. When Desmet went to the fair in Groningen in 1908, his advertisements for the Imperial Bio in the *Nieuwe Groninger Courant* and the *Provinciale Groninger Courant* even claimed that he had ‘ateliers artistiques’ in Brussels *and* New York.⁸⁰ We may safely dismiss this sort of ballyhoo as empty hype. But, as Charles Musser has remarked in connection with the American travelling cinema operator Lyman Howe, such fabrications are actually very revealing. They give an indication of what Desmet considered likely to catch the imagination of a potential audience. They also allow us to watch Desmet fashioning his own autobiographical myth.⁸¹ Musser also notes that ‘some people accepted these pronouncements at face value. [...] But many retained a healthy scepticism towards the showman’s promotional schemes and myth building.’⁸² Desmet could also cover himself by saying that had been born in Brussels and had appeared on the fairground there for years, although this was with the wheel of fortune. The reference to ‘New York’ may have been a way of drawing attention to the American films on Desmet’s programme, but it also reflected a desire for modernity and the exoticism of a world city.

The cinema booth obviously had to be put up and taken down between shows, which usually took a week. Desmet's containers were transported from town to town by rail, but Desmet himself acquired a car in 1907.⁸³ At the fairground site, the permanent staff was supplemented by hired labourers for loading and unloading and electricians for essential repairs. The convoy con-
sisted of Desmet's luxury caravan, a truck containing the organ, two open and two closed transporters and a mobile canteen. The Dutch railway network, which expanded rapidly in those years, was a vital facility for the touring cinema operators, and would later become even more important to Desmet when he went into film distribution.⁸⁴

In some of the towns visited by the Imperial Bio, Desmet, or members of his family, would later open permanent cinemas, such as the Cinema Parisien, the Cinema Royal, the Gezelligheid (Rotterdam), the Delfia (Delft) and the Amersfoort Film Theater (Amersfoort). In other places on his circuit, he later did good business as a distributor with local cinema owners such as Geenen in Helmond. Strangely enough, in view of his annual visits there in the period 1907-9, Desmet did not establish a cinema in Leiden.

Desmet travelled all over the Netherlands with his cinema. Most of his locations were medium- to large-sized provincial towns with a strong regional character. In some of these places, for instance Tilburg or Groningen, Rotterdam and Amersfoort, he had earlier toured his wheel of fortune and the Canadian Toboggan. Desmet was conspicuously absent from cities like Utrecht and Maastricht, but this was probably due to the presence there of his competitors, notably Benner and Alberts Frères.

In most towns Desmet's visits were one-off affairs, and this was due to the murderous competition between cinema operators. He also visited a number of special fairs organised in connection with anniversaries and exhibitions. These were not annual events, so they did not provide continuity. Furthermore, it appears from the Desmet Archive and municipal archives that, generally speaking, Desmet bid less for his sites than his rivals Benner and Alberts Frères, so in some places he simply missed his chance. Alberts Frères and Benner were able to secure long leases from some of the larger local authorities, which enabled them to eliminate the competition completely.⁸⁵ Because of the space they took up, only one travelling cinema was allowed at most of the fairgrounds. But there were exceptions, and two cinemas could occasionally be found at the same fair, sometimes even competing with film shows in rented auditoria or in the early permanent cinemas.⁸⁶

It is not clear when Desmet finally gave up his travelling cinematograph. The Imperial Bio was still touring the Netherlands after the opening of his first permanent cinema, the Cinema Parisien, in Rotterdam on 13 March 1909. The travelling cinema appeared in Leiden in July of that year and later in Delft (August) and Zeist (August to September). It was still operating in October 1910, when it could be seen in Nymegen and Tiel.⁸⁷ It is again uncertain whether Desmet was there in person at Nymegen. The person mentioned as the regisseur or front-of-house manager at Nymegen was Nico
Broekema, who usually worked for Desmet's rival Hommerson. But Desmet had also employed such managers in earlier years. In any event, it is clear from his private letters that he was present in Tiel.⁸⁸ In 1911, we still find him tendering for sites at fairs in Groningen, Utrecht, Tilburg, Den Bosch and Nymegen, but in the last three of these cities, it was Alex Benner's travelling cinema that was eventually seen at the fair.⁸⁹ But this looks very much like a put-up job. Benner probably owed Desmet a lot of money, since Desmet offered $f500 for the fair in Tilburg, $f750 for Den Bosch and no less than $f1,250 for Nymegen. This was still not enough for the Nymegen authorities, and he finally had to pay $f1,350. Benner, who had become a regular customer of Desmet's distribution business, took all his films and advertising material from Desmet for these three fairs, and shared the printing and film transportation costs.⁹⁰

## Film and audience at the Imperial Bio

Although a precise reconstruction of Desmet's film shows is no longer possible, the situation was probably no different in his case than with other mobile cinemas. Three people were always present to make sure the show ran smoothly: the projectionist, the pianist and the 'explicateur' or lecturer. The projectionist screened the film. The pianist provided musical accompaniment for the silent films, emphasizing dramatic moments and generally setting the mood. The explicateur's job was to provide a better understanding of the film, and he appeared as a sort omniscient narrator. But he also imitated the voices of the characters, adding sound to their silent speech. Many explicateurs crafted this job into a true performance, and some of them were very popular with audiences: Willy Mullens, for instance, who performed in his own booth. Benner had a permanent explicateur, the former actor and variety artist Louis Hartlooper, who contributed very much to the attraction and success of the Benner cinema.⁹¹ Desmet never gave these commentaries himself, and did not employ anyone else for the job on a permanent basis. Perhaps because of his introverted personality, he left the task to his own managers or bought in specialists. Local pianists often provided the musical accompaniments. Desmet's shows were thus likely to have been often rather local in character and very different from each other. There was no such thing as a typical Desmet show, unless it was precisely this local flavour.

Twelve years on from the very first film projections, it was still very difficult to keep the image on the screen flicker-free. Not all projectors produced sharp and flicker-free images. There were several reasons for this: the projector speed, the type of shutter used, or the condition of the film perforations.
Jumpy projection would provoke harsh criticism from both the press and the audience. Anyone who came along with a solution was sure of applause from the press. When Desmet appeared at the Helmond fair in 1907, the local paper, *Nieuws van de Week*, noted (in a discussion that appears very much orchestrated by Desmet himself) that 'there's not the trace of a flicker in the pictures, everything is projected life-size and the image on the screen is unusually sharp. So there's absolutely no question of the eye strain that people complained of previously.'⁹² Desmet's projection was not always so immaculate, however. In an advertisement in the *Tilburgsche Courant*, after Sunday performances at the Royal Glee Club's hall in Tilburg, Desmet announced that 'regretting the frequent interruptions of last week's programme, which were due to a faulty projector, I am pleased to report that these problems have now all been resolved satisfactorily, and I therefore look forward in all confidence to your future attendance'.⁹³

As noted above, a pianist and a violinist accompanied the films shown at Amersfoort in October 1907. Usually, however, there was only piano accompaniment. In May 1908, Desmet advertised a performance in Groningen 'with superb music (Bechstein upright piano)'.⁹⁴ He was very proud of this Bechstein, and when he put on a show at the Casino Association in Den Bosch in February, he replaced the piano there with the Bechstein.⁹⁵ It has been claimed that the pianist for the Imperial Bio was a Mr Carvallo [also spelled Carvalho] who later became the pianist at Desmet's Cinema Parisien in Amsterdam.⁹⁶ There is no firm evidence for this, but there were favourable notices of the music at performances of the Imperial Bio in Zaandam: 'The pianist Lebon deserves praise for his fine playing,' and in an advertisement for the shows in Den Bosch, Desmet introduced his pianist as 'Mr Johan Heerkens from Tilburg'. In Tiel, the programmes were '...embellished by the superb piano music of Mr Izaak Velleman.'⁹⁷ Not everybody was smitten by the piano music. The *Streekbode van Zeist, Driebergen en Omstreken* praised the film programme, 'but the monotonous piano accompaniment becomes tedious after a while'.⁹⁸

The explicateur was an equally familiar figure at the travelling cinemas. Desmet already had one in Amersfoort in October 1907.⁹⁹ In Sittard, a journalist wrote: 'And then there are the front-of-house manager's explanations, which translate the superb pictures into words for the benefit of the audience. All of this makes for a highly entertaining evening.'¹⁰⁰ This may mean that, in addition to his duties as front-of-house manager, the above-mentioned F. A. Alten also provided the commentary. Desmet's explicateur in Nymegen and Tiel was R. Roodvelt.

His most prominent explicateur was the one engaged for the shows at the May fair in Groningen in 1908. This was the Amsterdam travelling showman
and explicateur Frederik Keijzer. Keijzer had toured the country years before with his so-called 'anti-fairground' presentations. At fair times, Keijzer neatly capitalised on local resistance to the fair by putting on film shows in rented premises, for which he used exactly the same repertoire of Pathé films as the people at the fair. He apparently had few scruples about appearing at Desmet's cinema booth in Groningen. Meanwhile, he had acquired a reputation nationally, and Desmet had his name printed in large letters in his advertisements. 'Enthralling and cultivated commentary by Mr. Frederik Keijzer!! Amsterdam', proclaimed the advertisement in the *Nieuwe Groninger Couvrant*.¹¹⁰¹ He did not mention that Keijzer had been living in Groningen for years. Film titles were not published in the advertisements. The phenomenon of 'cinema', plus Keijzer's 'show', was considered enough.¹⁰² The press was generous with praise:

> Just next to this building [the Hippodrome] stands the colourful and sparkling booth of De Smet's Imperial Bio, where for a modest entrance charge visitors are offered splendid cinematograph films, whose attractions are enhanced by the lucid, absorbing and humorous commentaries of Mr. Keijzer.¹⁰³

Desmet had other ways besides the press of attracting audiences. Barrel-organ processions through the town at the beginning of a fair were also an effective form of advertising. Adopting a practice he would continue in his days as a cinema owner, Desmet also despatched his own publicity vehicle onto the streets, a sort of handcart fitted with a sandwich board for the posters. Otherwise, he merely distributed flyers on the streets and at the fair. Once people had reached the fair, the facade of the cinema with its electric lights acted like a huge advertising hoarding that lured them like moths to a flame. The ears as well as the eyes were seduced by the music of Desmet's organ, which stood by the entrance to the cinema. Not everybody was enthanted by music of this type, as was evident from one reaction during the fair at Zeist. The combination of horticultural show, historical village and fairground attracted such a diverse crowd that there were bound to be one or two disagreements. A gondola trip on lamplit boats, with an appropriate background of guitar and mandolin music, had been arranged for the evening of Monday 30 August. However, the atmosphere turned out to be less idyllic than anticipated:

> The mandolin clubs were strumming their tunes in the middle of the square. The refined sounds of the guitars and mandolas were completely inaudible to anybody standing at any distance, for they were drowned by the blast of the machine behind Old Zeist, the hammering at the 'Try Your Strength' stall, the din of the
organ at the cinematograph booth and the roar of voices from the market square and fair.¹⁰⁴

The seating at Desmet’s cinema was divided into three sections. Because of the flickering images, the more expensive seats were, as often still today, those at the back, in a reversal of the order in conventional theatres.¹⁰⁵ F.A. Nöggerath’s Bioscope Theater in Amsterdam also had the cheapest seats at the front and the most expensive at the back, and the press in both Zeist and Amsterdam noted this as something both remarkable and ‘modern’.¹⁰⁶ Like other cinema operators, Desmet reserved Saturday or Sunday evenings for his so-called ‘Elite’ or ‘Gala Performances’. However, unlike Alberts Frères, Desmet did not raise his prices for these shows. One wonders, therefore, whether he was attracting the same kind of audience mix as Frères. On Wednesday and Sunday afternoons, he often put on shows ‘For Children and All the Family’, and these matinees were often preceded by intensive advertising. This does not necessarily mean that only children attended these afternoon shows, but the price differences probably did create something of a barrier. Parents who took their children to the evening shows had to pay the full rate for their offspring. If they could pay to get in, children were free to attend any show they pleased in those years. Film censorship and age discrimination did not yet exist. Desmet only once announced a programme specially compiled for his matinees. As an audience segment, Desmet was interested in youngsters and their companions as a bonus to his evening shows. Anticipating parental complaints against the cinema, he portrayed his children’s shows as innocent and instructive. The following is taken from an advertisement for a performance in Tilburg in 1908:

> Parents! The children’s performances at ‘The Imperial Bio’ strictly exclude anything unsuitable for the eyes or ears of a child. The performances are of an instructive, educational and strictly moral character. Sunday next, among other attractions, the showing of ‘Sketch from the life of a teacher’. Send your children to these performances and enjoy the happy look on their faces when they get home.¹⁰⁷

After 1907, ticket prices fell at the fairs, due probably to excess capacity or competition from other attractions. Another factor was the arrival of the first permanent cinemas, whose lower admission prices were undercutting prices at the travelling cinemas. Prices in the rented halls held their own, but here too there were complaints of excess capacity. When Desmet put on performances in December 1907, the *Limburgse Aankondiger* claimed that they had cost him money:
We could have wished Mr. De Smet greater success, particularly because his cinema must be reckoned one of the best at the moment. But he chose a bad time, and Sittard is not the place for weekly shows costing money, and certainly not when the admission prices are so high.¹⁰⁸

How much did audiences pay for admission to one of Desmet's shows? In 1908 prices at the regular fairs were 60 cents for the rear stalls, 40 for the centre stalls and 25 for the front stalls. It became a little cheaper in 1909, when these prices were 50, 30 and 20 cents, respectively. Prices for children also fell slightly in 1909, compared to 1907 and 1908. Desmet's performances in hired halls, as well as those at the special fairs, were more expensive than those at the regular fairgrounds. Between 1907 and 1909 they remained at 75 cents for the rear stalls, 50 for the centre, and 30 for the front. Desmet's prices largely matched those of his competitors, both in the halls and at the fair.

There are few figures available for audience sizes at Desmet's booth. Press notices sometimes declared that the hall was bursting at the seams, but now and again they noted that the place might have been better filled. Seating capacities in the halls are equally difficult to estimate. Desmet's booth is known to have been 260 square metres in area. The Desmet Archive reveals that the Frans Rouleau-Berger furniture factory delivered 248 tip-up seats to Desmet, which were first used at the fair in Rotterdam in 1907. This purchase tells us nothing about the total seating capacity, as Desmet could already have had an existing stock of seats. It is equally unclear whether there was also a standing area in his booth, since his advertisements mention only the three categories of stall seating.

Boost gives a figure of 280 seats, but this figure becomes questionable when he writes that around 1907 the Mullens's booth had seating for 800 in a space which, at 544 square metres, was twice the size of Desmet's. In the years before this, the Mullens's booth, at 240 square metres, was about the same size as Desmet's. Desmet himself advertised a seating capacity of 600 at the Groningen fair of May 1908.¹⁰⁹ This seems a little exaggerated. If we bear in mind that he required at least 60 square metres for the projector, the aisles and a minimum distance of 1 metre from the screen, the booth could have accommodated an audience of around 500 people. Desmet's figure of 600 could only have been achieved by cramming a large number of people up against each other or by offering standing room to part of the audience.¹¹⁰ Desmet described his booth precisely as 'a pleasant distraction for the lingering gaze, but also a place where even on the busiest evenings it is possible to sit comfortably and without being crowded by other people.'¹¹¹ Even if Desmet could accommodate 500, he must have had a substantial number of seats at his disposal. Aside from a few exceptions, most Dutch travelling cinemas, as
well as the first permanent cinemas, were on a smaller scale than this.¹¹² With the possible exception of Alberts Frères's booth, travelling cinemas with 1,000 seats or more, such as those encountered in other countries, were unknown in the Netherlands.¹¹³

The scale of Desmet's operation when on tour was determined by all kinds of factors, but weather was the most important. Even in summer, the rains of Holland were a terrible thorn in the side of the cinema operators. They could advertise as much as they liked, but they were powerless against the elements, and this was one of the things that made fairground operation an extremely risky way of making a living. A thunderstorm wrecked the opening of both the horticultural show in Zeist and the opening of the historical village of 'Old Seyst'. Showers continued to fall during the days that followed. Wherever Desmet went with his Imperial Bio, the prospect of good weather for the fair was reported almost euphorically in the press.

The social composition of Desmet's audiences can be established only roughly. The audiences in the winter months, the performances in halls and at the 'kermesses d'été' were presumably better off, since admission prices at these venues were higher than at the regular fairs. However, a report in the *Nieuwe Courier* of Roermond suggests that audiences in the rented halls were not always composed of the area's most sensitive souls:

> As we have already seen at other performances in this location, the behaviour of the people in the upper circle was again anything but civilised. Things came to such a pass that the police had to be called in.¹¹⁴

In view of his reduction of admission prices between 1907 and 1909, particularly prices for children, it seems safe to assume that Desmet tried to pack in as many people as possible at the fairground shows, without bothering too much about who they might be. The reduced admission for children may have been a calculated manoeuvre to get the whole family out to the cinema. On the other hand, the reduced admission prices could also have been due to competition from the earliest permanent cinemas or generally slack times on the fairground. Desmet addressed a broad public that included both the old and the new lower classes (farm labourers, factory workers) and the middle classes of the large cities and smaller towns. The conservative upper classes might have occasionally risked a visit to the cinema at the 'kermesses d'été', such as the one in Zeist. Desmet's negotiations with the anti-alcohol lobby in Amersfoort suggest that the audience there may also have contained elements of the conservative, churchgoing part of the population. On the other hand, Desmet did not purposely avoid risky or sensational films in order to
spare his audience's feelings. In this connection, Charles Musser writes of a
'cinema of desire' when describing the regular programmes of dramas and
comedies at the American nickelodeons. He contrasts this with the so-called
'cinema of reassurance' of the American travelling operator Lyman Howe,
who did not select films of that kind for inclusion in his shows.¹¹⁵ Desmet did
not apply such strict divisions. In common with his rivals, he blended fiction
with non-fiction. Judging by his advertisements and reviews, neither his af-
ternoon nor his evening shows contained films that might have been consid-
ered offensive, such as the spicier items from Pathé. Where Musser writes of
Howe that, 'like John Philip Sousa, he knitted diverse groups together into a
unified audience using patriotism, enthusiasm, and a sense of national des-
tiny', it seems that Desmet, who was of mixed nationality, saw less reason to
try to mobilise his audience morally in the manner of Howe.¹¹⁶ Desmet's rival
Mullens, on the other hand, who was very nationalistic, probably did manip-
ulate his audiences like Howe, for he was said to have selected his films with
a view to offering them a 'cinema of reassurance'.

Films and programming at The Imperial Bio: nationalities, genres and
trends

The Desmet Archive contains no weekly checklists of programmes shown at The Imperial Bio. For information on these films, we have to rely completely on the titles mentioned in the advertisements and discussions in the local press. These newspapers announced foreign films under Dutch titles. Unlike other countries, and in contrast with later years, these were all literal translations of the original foreign titles or translations of the titles used in the countries surrounding the Netherlands (Germany, Belgium and France). PARDONNE GRAND-PÈRE (Pathé 1908), for example, became Grandfather's Forgiveness, LA VENGEANCE DU FORGERON (Pathé 1907) became The Blacksmith's Revenge. The films can thus be identified by country of origin, production company and year. However, it was not unusual for a competitor to show films under the same, or nearly the same title a year later, or even at the same time, which makes tracking them a little more difficult. The Ghost, shown by Desmet in 1909, may refer to the Pathé movie LE SPECTRE (1908), but could also be LE REVENANT (Gaumont 1907-8) or IL FANTASMA (Cines 1909). The identification and reconstruction of the programmes has been made easier by the survival of several films from Desmet's time on the road, on which more below.

The film programmes of the travelling cinema period consisted of a motley
collection of genres such as comedy, drama and actuality, with the longest
film never exceeding fifteen minutes in length. Desmet's programmes were no exception to this. A review of his shows in Zaandam in 1908 gives a good picture of the variety of material presented:

> And so we take a trip to Norway, calling at Christiania, Bergen and the Norwegian highlands with their superb waterfalls; next we are out at sea watching the cod and haddock fishing; then comes the great review of the fleet off the southern English coast, during which we watch submarines firing torpedoes; we next arrive in the mountains of Corsica; then we are off again to Paris, capital of France. There are some marvellous coloured scenes in the 'Poor Painter' when the painter dreams that he is in a fairytale palace, and then a film of a first-rate short story, in which an out of work and desperate labourer summons all his energy and decency of character to work his way up to the position of deputy manager of a large factory. Among other very entertaining and gripping films are 'A New Style of Assault' and 'The Short-sighted Cyclist'.¹¹⁷

Desmet sometimes changed his programme every two days, but this did not necessarily involve a complete change. This was sometimes the case, but more often than not he changed only part of the show, leaving his current hits on the bill. He sometimes stayed at a fair for just two days, but was mostly there for the whole of the fair week. This meant changing the programme two or three times. Some fairs actually went on for ten days, or even longer, and every now and then Desmet would stay on for a couple of days after the official end of the fair. Desmet and other operators must, therefore, have had considerable stocks of film at their disposal. During the winter season indoors, Desmet was not tied to the fair week, and often stayed for just a four-day weekend. In Tilburg, he showed films only on Sundays in a hall for several weeks between February and March 1908. In 1909, he continued for three weeks at Zeist, but this was due to the length of the exhibition where the fair had been set up, and was therefore exceptional.

Unlike the publicity for the programmes of his later permanent cinemas, Desmet's advertisements for the Imperial Bio seldom included an exhaustive list of the films shown. Only a few titles were mentioned in the press during 1907 and 1908, and in 1908 and 1909 there were advertisements in which only a single film would be mentioned. The named film would often be a news actuality, such as the earthquake in Messina or the christening of Princess Juлиana. In contrast to the period after 1910, named films did not by any means have to be the longest productions on the programme. News value was more important than length.
The actuality was very important in the years of Desmet’s travelling cinema. Real events were very popular, and the subjects shown were always boldly announced in the advertisements, despite their limited length.¹¹⁸ These were the films that usually received the press coverage. On 22 February 1908, for instance, the advertisements that appeared in the *Tilburgsche Courant* and the *Nieuwe Tilburgsche Courant* were devoted exclusively to the film of the joint funeral of the King and Crown Prince of Portugal, who had been assassinated on 1 February. The French film company Gaumont had filmed the funeral of the victims and released it under the title *FUNERAILLES DE S.M. LE ROI DON CARLOS II ET DE S.A.R LE DUC DE BRAGANCE* (FUNERAL OF H.M. DON CARLOS II AND H.R.H. THE DUKE OF BRAGANZA*). Desmet somehow managed to procure a copy quickly, for on Saturday 15 February he announced that he would be showing the film on Sunday 16 February, provided it was ready in time.¹¹⁹ This did not work out since the film arrived too late. But Desmet was able to slip in an extra performance on Saturday 22 February, expressly for the screening of this one film, plus his usual selection of dramas, comedies and ‘legendary tableaux’. There is still a copy of this film in the Desmet Collection.¹²⁰ *FUNERAILLES DE S.M. LE ROI DON CARLOS II ET DE S.A.R. LE DUC DE BRAGANCE* shows the arrival of the mourning coaches and the bearing of the coffins into the cathedral, but it also records the obtrusive behaviour of the photographers and cameramen in front of the church. So that in addition to its registration of an official event, the film is also an early documentary about the paparazzi. At the same time, it suggests the shadow side of the lives of the crowned heads of Europe, which were such a notable focus of interest at the film shows on the fairgrounds.

The designation ‘up-to-the-minute pictures’ in the advertisements for these films must not always be taken literally. The Imperial Bio’s first known performance, in Wageningen in October 1907, included among other material the film *Grand Review of the Home Fleet off the Coast of England* (possibly made by Urban).¹²¹ Desmet continued to include this film in his advertisements for quite some time. It was shown in Amsterdam in October 1907, in Sittard and Helmond in December, and then again in Tilburg in February 1908, in Zaandam in November and in Den Bosch in February 1909. In July 1909, he showed another film entitled *The Latest Review of the English Fleet on the Thames*, which may well be a film of a British fleet show from that year, but the topicalising adjective ‘latest’ may also be a trifle deceptive.¹²²

The fleet film supposedly included ‘sensational views of the sea’. It is difficult to assess the extent to which the programming and promotion of actualities was intended as a way of attracting the interest of the ‘better classes’ and the serious press. Perhaps Desmet wanted to get across the message that he did not just deal in low farce, but was also fully capable of appealing to
more serious tastes. At the same time, however, the adjective ‘sensational’ at-
tached to the description of the films is clearly aimed at attracting more than
just ‘serious’ spectators.

Travelling cinema operators used to stress Dutch actualities as ‘our own pictures’. This again needs to be approached with caution. Not every exhibitor had a camera and a stock of unexposed film in his personal possession. Only exceptional figures such as Mullens and Nöggerath had their own darkrooms. In the early years of the last century, exposed film was sent off to be developed in England or France. Sometimes the cinema operators might employ a local photographer or cameraman to shoot pictures, and from around 1910 it was possible to hire a cameraman from Pathé in Amsterdam.

We do not know whether Jean Desmet had his own film camera. The only actuality that might have been commissioned by Desmet is a film about a flight by Jan Olieslagers, nicknamed ‘The Antwerp Devil’, which was shot at Nymegen on 5 October 1910 and shown two days later. The Desmet Collection contains a film, dated 1910, called OLIESLAGERS VLIEGPOGINGEN IN DE WATERGRAAFSMEER (OLIESLAGERS ATTEMPT AT FLIGHT IN WATERGRAAFSMEER*), but this was shot near Amsterdam.¹²³ Many of the films advertised by Desmet as his ‘own pictures’ turn out on closer analysis to be productions of Alberts Frères or Nöggerath. In addition to the Alberts Frères films mentioned above – LISTRUM FESTIVITIES IN DELFT, THE CHRISTENING OF H.R.H. PRINCESS JULIANA and A TOUR OF THE BULB FIELDS OF HAARLEM – Desmet also showed their SPOORWEGONGELUK BIJ CONTICH (TRAIN CRASH AT CONTICH*, 1908). As already noted, the Imperial Bio screened the Nöggerath production of THE GERMAN KAISER’S VISIT TO MIDDACHTEN IN 1909. Dutch actualities of this kind do not feature in Desmet’s programmes in 1907, but they do appear regularly in the programs for 1908 and 1909. In November 1908 in Tiel, Desmet advertised the Delft Lustrum film as his ‘own picture’. The following year at Delft, the same film was introduced as ‘pictures from our own house’. Both these films were in fact productions by the Mullens from 1908 and 1909. Here, Desmet was simply annexing someone else’s productions. As he saw it, the maker of a movie was less important than its exhibitor. He clearly had no desire to refer to his Dutch competitors in his own advertisements. At best, therefore, Desmet’s description ‘our own pictures’ can be taken to mean Dutch productions, that is to say, films that were not made by large foreign firms such as Pathé.

The only three of Desmet’s Dutch actualities to survive from his travelling
days are OLIESLAGER’S ATTEMPT AT FLIGHT IN WATERGRAAFSMEER, a copy enti-
tled BULB FIELDS OF HAARLEM which might be the Alberts Frères film men-
tioned earlier, and THE CHRISTENING OF H.R.H. PRINCESS JULIANA.¹²⁴ The birth
of a successor to the House of Orange, which had experienced problems in producing heirs, was one of the most important events of 1909. Born 30 April 1909, Princess Juliana was christened on 5 June of that year. One of the most striking moments in the somewhat jerky film reportage of THE CHRISTENING OF H.R.H. PRINCESS JULIANA is its record of a slight accident. The Queen and her husband have just alighted in front of the church, when the coach carrying Emma, the Queen Mother, collides with the coach of Queen Wilhelmina. The wheels of the two coaches become entwined. A high-ranking military figure is seen tearing a strip off the coachman. The incident is a breach of decorum, but it has the effect of reducing official ritual to human proportions. Remarkably enough, Mullens simply kept the shot in the film.

Turning to feature films, it is not easy to deduce their genres from the Dutch titles in the advertisements, but we can say that, generally speaking, the films Desmet advertised were mostly dramas. This does not necessarily imply that dramas were the main ingredient of his programmes (the opposite was in fact the case); simply that he felt they needed more publicity than the comedies.

In the period 1907-8, feature films were advertised far less conspicuously than actualities anyway. The same applied to reviews of the programmes in the press. In contrast, there are a few advertisements from this period in which the titles are all given an equal amount of space. No one film appears to be more important than another. It was not until 1909 that advertisements listing several titles appeared, with one title printed large and in bold. An example of this is the advertisement for the Imperial Bio's performance at Leiden in the *Leidsch Dagblad* of 27 July 1909. Along with *THE CHRISTENING OF H.R.H. PRINCESS JULIANA, THE LATEST REVIEW OF THE ENGLISH FLEET ON THE THAMES, and PITY TO LOVE (DALLA PIETÀ ALL'AMORE, SAFFI-Comerio 1909)*, the title *THE GHOST* ('a high-tension drama') appears in large print.¹²⁵

But Desmet just as often placed advertisements announcing a variety of genres. The indication of diversity was evidently considered sufficient in those times. The films themselves are interchangeable. In the *Leidsch Dagblad* of Saturday 18 July 1908, Desmet announced the screening at the Imperial Bio of 'Enthralling dramas, beautiful scenes of nature, hilarious comedies, superb fairy-tale spectacles and the latest and most prominent events at home and abroad'. He then listed just the *LUSTRUM FESTIVITIES IN DELFT and THE TRAIN CRASH AT CONTICH*, followed by 'etc., etc.'.¹²⁶ This sort of cataloguing approach to film genres is repeated in his advertisements for the Imperial Bio at Tiel (October 1908), Zaandam (November 1908) and Leiden (July 1909).

The majority of the feature films mentioned by Desmet in his advertisements in 1907-8 were Pathé productions, particularly the dramas. The Desmet Col-
lection still has copies of LUTTE POUR LA VIE (STRUGGLE FOR LIFE, 1907), LA MAISON ENSORCELÉE (THE HAUNTED HOUSE, 1908), and two of the films mentioned above, LA VENGEANCE DU FORGERON and PARDONNE GRAND-PÈRE. LA MAISON ENSORCELÉE is a comedy about a haunted house with superb special effects by its maker, Segundo De Chomón. The other three are modern drawings. LUTTE POUR LA VIE (Fig. 11) is the film mentioned earlier in which 'an unemployed and desperate labourer summons all his energy and decency of character to work his way up to the position of deputy manager of a large factory'.¹²⁷ In passing, we enjoy a tour of the monuments of Paris during a sequence in which the hero follows a coach. In LA VENGEANCE DU FORGERON, a Midolded blacksmith kills his wife's aristocratic lover during a fight with hammers, and PARDONNE GRAND-PÈRE tells of the reconciliation between a grandfather and his daughter, who is disowned on account of her relationship with a woodcutter, but received back into the family through the intercession of her small daughter.

Desmet advertised LUTTE POUR LA VIE as a film lasting no less than thirty minutes, although according to the Pathé catalogues it was 300 metres long, which makes a film of about a quarter of an hour. The nitrate copy of the film, which is still present in the Desmet Collection, is actually only 271 metres long. Press descriptions leave no doubt that it is the same film. The length of

<figure><img src="image_9.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 11. Lutte pour la vie (Pathé 1907) – the tramp follows a carriage through Paris to offer a lady his services</figcaption></figure>
films, particularly dramas, increased appreciably during this period. The new longer dramas could be included alongside standard-length farces, non-fiction films and short dramas, none of which ever exceeded 300 metres. Up to this time, a film had lasted a quarter of an hour at the most. So length could now be used as a weapon of publicity and promoted as an object both exclusive and modern. It was evidently unimportant whether the film advertised actually lasted for half an hour. Another film purporting to be thirty minutes long was THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA, a film Desmet showed repeatedly throughout his career with the travelling cinema. It was most probably the Pathé movie CHRISTOPHE COLOMBE (CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS) dating from 1904: hardly a recent release, therefore, and just 265 metres long.¹²⁸

Desmet's programmes changed in 1909, at least as far as the titles advertised are concerned. He continued to show Pathé films, but films by other French production companies, such as Film d'Art and Éclair, also appeared on his programmes, together with a large number of Italian productions by companies such as Itala, Ambrosio, Comerio and Aquila. These programmes were further embellished by two American movies by Vitagraph. There was a marked fashion in 1909 for so-called 'art films', which were films about historical figures such as Henry III (ENRICO III/HENRY THE THIRD, Itala 1909) and Napoleon (THE LIFE DRAMA OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AND THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE OF FRANCE and NAPOLEON, MAN OF DESTINY, a 1909 Vitagraph movie in two parts). The former is a precursor of the Italian epic film, which later became such a popular genre. The latter is an example of the Vitagraph version of the historical genre.¹²⁹ Films of this kind were well received by the press, as we can see from a piece that appeared in the *Delftsche Courant* in 1909:

> The Fall of Napoleon is one of the finest and most clearly narrated films among the films currently being shown. The whole history of Napoleon's life unfolds before our eyes on the screen. We see the battles he won and those he lost. Finally, there are fine shots of him as a prisoner on St. Helena. There we see the great Coriscan standing on top of a rock, with bowed head, hands behind his back in a bent position, the famous cocked hat on his head and long coat. The waves roll towards us out of the distance and crash against the rock.¹³⁰

Both the Italian and the American 'art' films emerged from the French 'film d'art' movies, which built a reputation for themselves throughout Europe and the United States from 1908 onwards.¹³¹ In response to the growing criticism of the crudeness, sameness and surfeit of (mainly French) dramas and comedies, there was a search for alternatives that showed a modicum of educational responsibility. These films were distinguished mainly by their enlist-
ment of professional stage actors and their adaptation of popular historical
novels and plays. For a while, film in general benefited from the success of
these films. It was hoped that this kind of 'packaging' would attract the
wealthier people who normally went to the theatre. But they were also in-
tended as a way of securing the acceptance of the phenomenon of cinema as
such, at a time when the earliest cinemas were coming under heavy critical
fire. The 'film d'art' was in a certain sense a sequel to the actuality, which had
served to legitimate cinema up to that point. Like the actualities, however, the
'film d'art' formed only a small part of a whole programme. The rest of the
programme was taken up by the grotesque burlesques and violent dramas of
Pathé and their imitators.

Desmet's advertisements homed in on the legitimating potential of the
'films d'art'. He placed the following advertisement in the *Leidsch Dagblad* on
29 July 1909: 'The hit of the fair is the Imperial Bio which is offering items
never before shown by us or anyone else: art films performed by the great
French actors of the Odéon Théâtre, the Comédie Française and the Théâtre
Gymnase in Paris.'¹³² The titles of these films were not stated, but Desmet
was probably referring to films like *LA MAIN* (*THE HAND**, Film d'Art 1909),
which he had shown a month earlier in the Imperial Bio at Dordrecht.

The years 1908-9 witnessed the rise of new national film industries. Italy
and the United States not only joined in with the 'film d'art' but also under-
went general expansion. In the years 1908-9, the young Italian film industry
secured a position in the international market, which was due largely to its
production of historical movies.¹³³ The United States too discovered Europe
as an important outlet for its films around 1908.¹³⁴ In 1907, Vitagraph became
the first company to open branches in Paris and Berlin. The firm had estab-
lished its own laboratory in Paris to produce screening copies from negatives
sent over from America, which were then distributed in the various Euro-
pean countries. The perforation-strip on the copies made in Paris note their
place of origin.¹³⁵ 'The Vitagraph Company of Paris' is still legible on nitrate
copies of Vitagraph films in the Desmet Collection.

It is not known whether Desmet showed many Vitagraph movies in his
travelling cinema, but he certainly did show several Italian films. In July 1908
in Dordrecht, for example, he screened FACCIA A FACCIA (FACE TO FACE*, Itala
1908) at the Imperial Bio. The growing variety of Desmet's programming was
presumably connected with new developments in his film business. On 13
March 1909, Desmet opened his first permanent cinema at number 28 Korte
Hoogstraat in Rotterdam: the Cinema Parisien. In Rotterdam, he managed to
obtain a new kind of material. FACCIA A FACCIA was shown just two weeks
after the opening of the Cinema Parisien before it went on to Dordrecht.¹³⁶
The opening programme at the Cinema Parisien consisted of an assortment
<figure><img src="image_10.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 12. *Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei* (Ambrosio 1908) – introduction of Nidia, the blind flower seller</figcaption></figure>

of Italian shorts such as UN DRAMMA AL CIRCO (A DRAMA AT THE CIRCUS*, Cines 1908), FURTO ALLA MOSCHEA (THE THEFT IN THE MOSQUE*, Aquila 1908) and LE BIRICCHINATE DI UN RAGAZZO (THE LITTLE IMP, Ambrosio 1909), surmounted by GLI ULTIMI GIORNI DI POMPEI (THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII Ambrosio 1908) as the main feature (Fig. 12). This was just one of the films with which the Italians were creating an international sensation, although the scene of the eruption of Vesuvius nowadays looks clumsily done, and the beautiful Greek Ione is played by a rather ghastly actress. The film was based on Edward Bulwer-Lytton's historical novel *The Last Days of Pompeii* (1834), which enjoyed great popularity at the time. Desmet claimed in his advertisements that the actors in the film were from the Comédie Française. He was clearly trying to get in on the 'film d'art' trend before the Italian film had actually secured that kind of reputation. However, that was not long in coming. The rise of Italian and American cinema in Desmet's programming had to do with more than just Desmet's establishment in Rotterdam, for it was connected with another important development: the arrival of Dutch film distribution.
Conclusion

In 1907, Christian Slieker, the pioneer, gave up his travelling cinema and Desmet started his own. That same year, F.A. Nöggerath Jr. opened one of the first permanent cinemas in the Netherlands. Jean Desmet began his career at a time when the world of travelling cinema was going through a period of scaling up, increased investment, 'gentrification' and selection of the fittest for survival. Judging from the location of his fairground sites, the opulence of his booth and the composition of his programmes, Desmet belonged to the middle order of travelling cinema operators. He was not as big as Alberts Frères, but certainly bigger than Slieker, Carl Welte and Carmine Riozzi.¹³⁷ He took his travelling theatre to large cities and medium-sized towns that were largely provincial in outlook. When the opening of permanent cinemas brought about a gradual contraction of this market between 1908 and 1912, he did not turn to alternative fairground attractions. Unlike showmen such as Riozzi and Welte, Desmet refused to let himself be pushed out into country villages where there were still no cinemas. Like the Mullens, he just pressed on into the big cities where the permanent motion-picture theatres were beginning to appear and became an important pioneer of this new development. He plunged into the operation of fixed venues, first in Rotterdam and soon afterwards in Amsterdam. Having established this base, he set about opening cinemas throughout the country, eventually creating the first cinema chain in the Netherlands. Desmet's emulation of Nöggerath did not stop at cinema ownership. Following in the wake of Nöggerath and Pathé, he was to become one of the most important distributors in the Netherlands.