William Tell is a 1903 French silent short film directed by Lucien Nonguet and distributed in France by Pathé Frères.
[1] Edmond Boutillon as Albrecht Gessler The film shows five scenes inspired by key moments of the eponymous play by Friedrich Schiller.
William Tell helps a peasant escape on a rowing boat just before a group of soldiers enters.
Several villagers enter the square followed by two heralds who sound their trumpets before a proclamation is read: Everybody must salute the hat of Governor Gessler hanging on a pole.
[2] Although Georges Méliès directed in 1898 a film titled Adventures of William Tell (French: Guillaume Tell et le clown), this was just a knockabout farce featuring a clown trying to shoot an apple off the head of a dummy which comes to life.
[3] Lucien Nonguet can therefore rightly be credited as director of the first cinematographic adaptation of Schiller's play, albeit in a very abbreviated form.
[5] Pathé actually stressed the theatrical esthetics of the film in the way it was presented in its catalogue: "This popular and interesting legend takes place amidst the country life of the mountain population.
The beautiful and picturesque sights which exist in Switzerland have given us an opportunity of utilizing the resources our theatre affords and our scene-painters have been able to have a free run on their imaginations and have completed the work by a series of magnificent scenes of the most artistic character.