Diabolo Nightmare 1907
A clerk, unable to stop playing the game of Diabolo, strays in and out of precarious situations while playing with the toy.
A clerk, unable to stop playing the game of Diabolo, strays in and out of precarious situations while playing with the toy.
In front of a round tent, a pasha is sitting on the grass; to the right of the tent's door, covered with a patterned blanket, is a flagpole - on top of which is an 8-pointed star [Saturn-Film's logo]. The pasha claps hands, and a servant comes to his bid. The lord is going to smoke from his water-pipe while he buys some new slave girls. The servant calls the seller and his two henchmen, who bring forth four girls in patterned burnooses.
Four Arab men in white burnouses, two women in grey, and one female cook in striped burnous, are sitting in front of a cave in a forest path.
This is a compact telling of the Cinderella fairy tale and the film is elaborately staged.
The film, a parody of the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, follows a fisherman, Yves, who dreams of traveling by submarine to the bottom of the ocean, where he encounters both realistic and fanciful sea creatures, including a chorus of naiads played by dancers from the Théâtre du Châtelet. Méliès's design for the film includes cut-out sea animals patterned after Alphonse de Neuville's illustrations for Verne's novel.
The plot follows King Edward VII and President Armand Fallières dreaming of building a tunnel under the English Channel.
Stencil-coloured version of Segundo de Chomón's Les roses magiques (1906).
The opening title card explains that a painter has just finished his work when his assistant comes in and accidentally drinks varnish. The film then picks up as the painter goes haywire and sends the assistant into the painting.
In this film, Méliès concocts a combination fairy- and morality tale about the foolishness of trying to look too deeply into the workings of an unstable and inscrutable universe. At a medieval school, an old astronomer begins to teach a class of young men, all armed with telescopes, about the art of scrutinising an imminent eclipse. When a mechanical clock strikes twelve, all the young men rush to the windows and fix their telescopes on the heavens.
The artist is presented, with his board: his only appearance. The hand rapidly outlines a human head, into the chalky jaws of which it inserts a cigarette. The chalk head smokes, and finally eats, the cigarette. The head of a woman is drawn, which gradually fills and becomes undoubtedly human. —Urban-Eclipse catalogue
A photographer has a studio in which he asks women to pose in the nude or in daring clothes. Then he receives his all-male clientele, to show them (and the camera, via inserts) the results of his art. But a previous model who refused to take off her clothes, accusing him of harassment, returns with the police in tow.
Jim, a robber, is in love with the chief’s bride Clara, who firmly rejects his many advances. In revenge, he snitches on the entire gang of robbers to the police, who immediately imprison the chief and his men. Clara kills the treacherous Jim and sets out to free her lover from prison. (Stumfilm.dk)
The scene of the drama is a block of modern flats. Many of the residents are away at a dance, and the janitor and his staff decide upon a jollification of their own. They invite their friends to a fine high tea. Everybody is having a fine time, and their spirits are running high. We are now taken to the outside of the hall door, and watch with amusement the frantic pounding and bell ringing of the residents returning from their evening engagements and seeking admission to their apartments. The gay gathering inside are too busy with their own pleasure to heed the angry crowd outdoors. A policeman is called, but all to no purpose, and the tenants are all taken to the station for quarters for the night. Returning to the janitor's quarters we see that the jollifications have been concluded and the guests are all departing. The superior officer at the station concludes to make another effort to gain admittance in the building and, with the tenants at his heels, he approaches the flats.
A woman goes to the dentist for a toothache and is given gas. On her way home on the subway she can't stop laughing, and every other passenger catches the laughter from her.
A boy in a cadet's uniform paints a statement on the top of the frame and then tips his cap to the audience. Also known as "Matsumoto fragment".
As a young couple are courting, they are rudely interrupted and split up. The man is seized and is turned over to a gang of toughs who want to hang him. Though she is greatly outnumbered, the young woman wastes no time in making a determined effort to rescue him.
An extremely clumsy man tries to clean a woman's house with disastrous results.
The first adaptation of Lew Wallace's novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.
During the Paris Commune, a boy runs across trouble at the barricade. The film is now attributed to Alice Guy-Blaché by the Gaumont company, although there is some debate about whether it was directed by Étienne Arnaud.
Very much a slapstick chase in the mode of the period, as Victorine's boyfriend escapes from the kitchen and is pursued on rooftop by his unsuspecting fellow officers.