La Fée Aux Choux

Alice Guy's Garden of Dreams

There is something deeply captivating about La Fée aux Choux―the oversize cabbages tell you this is a fantasy while the fairy beckons you to observe the pleasant unreality of babies being born in a garden. This 1900 film frequently stands in as Alice Guy's 1896 debut, but since no one has found her 1896 version, the fact that it ever existed is still disputed. With new documentary evidence from 1896 and close attention to the relevant circumstances, this book presents multiple points of confirmation that Alice Guy directed her first version of La Fée aux Choux in 1896 and that it was different from the 1900 version. From memoirs, newspapers, letters, public records, and photographs, we gain a sense of how the first La Fée aux Choux surprised and delighted its audience, and how it awoke the world of theater, entertainment, and artistic expression to a new medium.