Alcohol and its Victims

Les victimes de l'alcoolisme (Alcohol and its victims) is a 1902 French short drama film directed by Ferdinand Zecca, inspired by the 1877 naturalist novel L'Assommoir by Emile Zola. It is the first film inspired by this novel and one of first films aimed at fulfilling an objective of general social interest, in this case the fight against alcoholism. The film is composed of five scenes introduced by intertitles:

1. Interior of the happy and prosperous worker household A working-class family is living happily in a simple but comfortable house, a women, her mother and two children do their daily tasks and when the man of the house comes home, they all have dinner together.
2. The first step to the wine merchant The husband meets in the street some friends who invite him to go and have a drink in a café.
3. The ravages of alcohol. His wife picks him up at the cabaret In the café, the man drinks and plays dice with his friends. His wife comes with their children and insists that he must come home. He brutally pushes her away.
4. In the attic. Misery. The family is now living in a dilapidated attic. When the man arrives, he has a fit of delirium tremens wiggling on the floor.
5. The madhouse. Delirium tremens The man is locked in a padded cell, with a straitjacket. A raving maniac, he tears it apart, and dances wildly around the room before collapsing and remaining motionless. The five scenes are each composed of one single wide shot taken by a static camera in front of theatre-like sets. The intertitles introducing each of the scene use black letters on a light background. There is a jump cut in scene 4, the man appearing suddenly wiggling on the floor. This may be due to a lost fragment. This is the first film by Pathé Frères including intertitles and one of the first in the world. Les victimes de l'alcoolisme is the first known cinematic adaptation of a novel by Emile Zola.