Erreur de porte (1904) Online

An illiterate man with some sense of intestinal urgency needs to find the right door at a railroad station. He chooses.... the wrong door.

Zecca was Pathe's leading director at this point and was always willing to experiment in an effort to find a new way of telling a story cinematically. This split reel subject does not fall into that category. It is simple, crude, short enough to be funny, and even has an appropriate structure -- there is a payoff joke at the end.

The questions raised by this short are: what audience is it intended for, since the doors to the toilet and the telephone are marked in English. Was this intended for the English-speaking market? Was it intended for the French market, where the ease of reading the telephone door would make the joke clear?