When a naughty poodle steals a string of sausages from a butcher shop, the staff gives chase and a chaotic pursuit across the village ensues. Alice Guy’s take on the popular chase picture genre.
Home Media Availability: Released on DVD.
The Great Poodle Heist
Nobody can say for certain when the first movie chase was filmed. Certainly, the chase genre played heavily into the earliest comedies. The famous 1895 Lumière projected picture show included The Sprinkler Sprinkled (L’Arroseur Arrosé), which featured the briefest of chases but cinema was not done with tales of pursuit.
The chase picture was a genre in its own right by 1907, when director Alice Guy produced this canine variation, and audiences had certain expectations: a rapid change of scenery and plenty of chaos. Guy was happy to oblige.
No time is wasted at the beginning of the picture. There is an opening shot of our small hero, a fluffy poodle, and then we cut to the front of a butcher shop with a coil of sausages resting on display outside. The poodle wanders into the shot, looks around to see if the coast is clear, grabs the sausage link at the end of the string, and then hightails it for parts unknown with twenty feet of sausages trailing behind.
The butcher grabs the very end of the sausage string but is dragged along by the determined dog. He, his staff, and some curious onlookers chase after the little thief but the poodle evades them by running between two women out doing their shopping, causing the chickens that they purchased to fly away. The women join in the chase.
The poodle passes by some painters whitewashing a wall but the crowd chasing it has grown so large that they knock over the scaffolding and spill paint and painters everywhere. The painters join the chase.
The poodle runs under a baby carriage, dragging the sausages with it and knocking both carriage and baby over. The nurse joins the chase. The poodle runs through a game of nine pins being played on the street, knocking everything over and spoiling the score. The players join the chase.
By this time, the crowd chasing the poodle has grown even more unwieldy and the chaos they cause increases. They knock over a cart transporting pigs, another cart transporting ceramics and smashing the lot, they break the props of a circus act that is rehearsing outdoors, they trample through a house and smash everything in their way. Each injured party adds to the human snowball and the chaos increases. (I believe there is a metaphor for the start of the First World War to be found in here.)
Finally, the poodle runs across the path of a hunter with a shotgun. The hunter isn’t being too careful about his aim and accidentally shoots the sausage string, breaking it. The poodle makes off with its reduced but still lavish meal and the crowd falls upon the remaining sausages, gobbling them down cold on the spot while the butcher howls in anguish. Guy then cuts to a close shot of the poodle daintily eating its fill and posing and its hind legs. (And, like Metroid, the hero reveals herself to be a heroine.)
The shot also reveals that the sausage string was likely reinforced with sturdy twine or wire for the shoot. Sausage casings are usually cleaned intestines and the string is accomplished by twisting the individual lengths as they are filled. They’re robust enough for display but I doubt the thin intestine casing could have stood up to the punishments inflicted by this picture.
All right, before we go any further, can we appreciate the brilliance of the leading actor in this picture! The little poodle always managed to be in just the right place for maximum chaos and never gave up on its primary goal of being a sausage thief. They are clever dogs, of course, but this particular poodle set about thieving with particular panache, which deserves to be singled out for praise.
Chase films didn’t need much of a plot to hang their story on but The Race for the Sausage has some interesting themes. As the chase became more and more chaotic, it occurred to me that if the butcher had just let go of the sausages, which he eventually lost anyway, all the other chaos would have never happened. The poodle would have made a clean getaway, true, but the trail of chaos was due to the length and size of the pursuit. The poodle would have gone a few blocks and eaten its sausages in peace. As is so often true in life, the cure is worse than if the initial injury had simply been left alone an unavenged. (This is a metaphor for World War One!)
Shifting gears to the subject of chase films generally, Guy’s picture is a rather good example of that maturing genre. As stated earlier, I cannot put a precise date on the start of the chase film but Georges Méliès concluded L’Auberge du bon repos or The Inn of “Good Rest” (1903) with a chaotic one-scene circular chase and R.W. Paul made The Maniac Chase in 1904 (which was ripped off by Edison the same year) about a man who thinks he is Napoleon escaping from an asylum and pursued by orderlies.
By 1905, the chase film was being described as such in trade advertisements. Selig bragged that its new release, The Serenade, “is a ‘chase’ picture and ‘the Chase of all Chases’” with “12 scenes of cyclonic activity and bewilderment.” The Dutch comedy The Misadventure of a Frenchman without Pants on Zandvoort Beach, released the same year, was an extended chase of, well, you know.
Guy goes for both variety and quantity in her chase picture, with every form of obstacle thrown in front of poodle and pursuers. There’s no fruit cart (that was pioneered by Méliès in his 1904/1905 picture An Adventurous Automobile Trip) but we do get a crockery cart being smashed, plus exploding pillows, so we cannot accuse Guy of shorting us.
This is a fine example of a silent comedy that doesn’t do anything particularly new but it does everything particularly well. Guy combines dog films (quite popular), chase films, slapstick and, of course, ends it all with a signature 1900s closeup shot of one of the ruffians. I couldn’t be more satisfied.
Where can I see it?
Released on DVD as part of the Gaumont Treasures collection.
☙❦❧
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Movies Silently 
What a treat! Nice to see a review of this great little film.
Although perhaps O/T, I can’t wait for Kino’s forthcoming Wonder Dogs Blu-ray (with a Tom Mix film, too!).
–Proud owner of the Rin-Tin-Tin BluRay and Grapevine’s Fearless The Dog Detective DVD