Grand-Guignol’s works did not spare scenes of violence.
At the beginning of the 20th century, in the works of Theater du Grand-Guignol everything happened. They cut off faces, cut off heads, plucked eyes from their sockets, revived people’s skin, strangled children; there are excesses: blood, sperm, sweat, syphilis, leprosy; drugs, hypnosis, blood of nine different colors and spurts; madness, excitement, fainting, screaming, sex, laughter.
Grand-Guignol exposed the thirst in the mirrors of death with the rich and poor in France’s Belle Époque. In the absence of the guillotine: Théâtre du Grand-Guignol.
The place is small and that’s why it worked. The scenario in which the fabricated massacres took place was seven out of seven. Only 250 privileged witnesses witnessed the uncensored performances that served as the seed for the subgenres of cinematographic horror we know today as “slasher” and “giallo”.
The front of Grand-Guignol.
No Michael Myers without Grand-Guignol. No Jason Voorhes without Grand-Guignol. No massacres in Texas or scary phone calls without Grand-Guignol.
“The vision of torture and death has long fascinated man and only recently have human positions become something limited to their public and conducted as aseptically as possible, where the fun for the public, which requires of their dose. of morbidity “, said Robert Barreiro in the recently published book “Mascaras, machetes y massacres. Historia del slasher ”(Cuarto Menguante, 2022) to justify the existence of the theater as it calls us to it.
“This ‘gap’ of entertainment has led to the belief that the simulation of a death, done convincingly, can evoke a dose of adrenaline similar to observing a real death. In France, the new form of entertainment will come in the form of a very special theater: the Grand-Guignol “, completes the author.
Michael Myers, a madman who could easily star in a play in Grand-Guignol.
Different seasons, same blood
Grand-Guignol has several stages, each with the imprint of its owner. Of course, its central axis is always the same: the impact. The French went to Grand-Guignol to feel.
The first owner of the theater was Oscar Meteniera former cop turned playwright who had just made naturalistic plays.
Oscar Metenier, the creator of the theater.
He inaugurated it on April 13, 1897 in a building that became a chapel. Its remains remain: two large angels at the entrance door and boxes that look like confessionals. I was in Pigalle, in the charming Parisian neighborhood of Montmartre where at the beginning of the 20th century the only thing inhaled was art. The first day of Guignol was celebrated with eight works. Mademoiselle Fifiby Guy de Maupassant, and La Breme those two.
The small joint does not discriminate. Rich and poor mixed with the smell of incense, the darkness and the dirty seats.
Metenier made presentations that looked like moving pictures from Harry Potter diaries. Everything he saw on the street and in the newspapers he did work. The mise en scène that motivated him was like witnessing “in person” the frightening episodes made by marginalized people in recent days make news.
Guignol mentioned in a diary from the time of Chosiy.
shining eyes
It all changed in an act by Maupassant which saw a French prostitute kill a German officer. Nor should we take credit from the second owner of the theater, Max Mauneywho occupied Guignol in 1898. The connection between the two factors was simple: Mauney noticed how excited the people were when they saw the French prostitute murder the foreign officer and he understood that the town needed blood with spades.
He then used impeccable melodrama and bloody crimes. From Mauney, Grand-Guignol offers compelling horror works, almost always based on real events, often with a main theme related to insanity and outright violence..
An article that shows the aura of Guignol is The Hallucination Laboratoryfrom Andre de Lorde, the area’s star playwright. It tells the story of a jealous doctor who takes revenge on a patient by driving him insane. It all ends with two sharp objects sticking to each other’s skulls.
The stage performances were very strong.
As for the texts there is André de Lorde, for special effects there Paul Retineau. Retineau worked magic with any instrument at hand. He didn’t use large budgets to make upside down eyeballs, relentless blood flow, acid-shattered faces (or burned by stoves), or severed heads that kept shaking even after being cut. these. Just a few elements and brains are enough to control the lights and sounds.
The best example of the good use he has made of low cost effects is the short work The Garden of Torture, where they had to skin a character alive. Retineau took masking tape and painted the edge of the sticker red. He wore it to the actor and the others undressed. When this happened he applied a startling sound and voila.
Activities like this have caused a lot of excitement among the spectators so there are special cubicles for those who want to see and don’t see. They are the boxes that look like confessionals. There they occur from noisy sexual scenes to situations where guttural screaming dominates. And someone is failing.
At Guignol there are special boxes for those who want to do more than just watch a play.
One of the characteristics of Guignol is the fainting of the spectators. At one construction site, six collapsed simultaneously. The lust is absolute. The more people faint, the better. Mauney said out loud that there were men and women who were obsessed with his theater. He did it to arouse interest. He also clarified that everyone who goes to check on his works has a doctor available in case something happens to him. Sometimes, in fact, the doctor faints.
To reduce the darkness of each event there were “Hot and Cold Showers”, which were nothing but comics rest plays. The effect Guignol is looking for is thrill and squeeze, excite and squeeze, excite and squeeze.
The works are respected by critics. Behind the texts there are well -known playwrights who know what they are doing and on stage are actors and actresses who are willing to do everything. With De Lorde, above, he worked Alfred Binetan experimental psychologist who supported the playwright’s crazy ideas.
The actress who symbolizes Guignol is Paula Maxa, the first cry queen; the “most murdered woman in the world”. They say he died almost 10,000 times in different ways and he shouted “Help!” 983 times, “Assassin!” 1263 and “Rape!” 1804.
His characters were scalped, dinembowelled, guillotined, hanged, cut into 83 pieces, eaten by cougars and strangled. The actress stood out on stage Camille Choise as the owner of the theater.
Maxa, the Guignol star, is the actress who has been murdered most times in history.
Choisy, who succeeded Mauney in 1914 and oversaw Guignol until 1930, downplayed the text of the works and made the presentation dominant. He even bought an entire operating room once to convince everyone.
Two wars and the cinema
After the First World War, the attraction to Grand-Guignol began to wane. In 1930, Jack Jovin took over Choisy and focused on psychological drama over gore. He fired Maxa out of jealousy and because of that he signed the beginning of the debacle.
As if the first was not enough, World War II realized that real-life events were more than fiction. During the war, the theater was often visited by Nazi officials who occupied France, reason enough for people to consider that Guignol was contaminated.
All of this pushed viewers to look for others. They are tired of seeing real people suffer and the only thing Guignol can give them is that and more.
The new front of the Grand-Guignol in Montmartre.
After World War II, the theater continued its routine programming and did so by parodying itself and exaggerating everyone to the point of ridicule.
Cinema, the art that will be the inspiration, gave a knock out blow that ended it. The horror offered by filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock has caused viewers to want to see Marion Crane instead of characters like Maxa.
Trying to overcome the effects caused by horror films in the late fifties and early sixties, Guignol sealed its doors in 1962, when Charles Nonon that’s his manager.
Janet Leigh and her famous scream at Psycho.
So, like the waves coming together and forming a tsunami, the cluster of inspirations separate from Guignol flooded the rooms and platforms we use today. Perhaps, like viewers at the time, we still have a thirst for death shows.
The slasher does not stop. Scream, for example, had a sequel this year.
Sources: GRAND STREET magazine (Summer 1996), BBC culture, The New York Times, Crimereads, Time.
Source: Clarin
