Uncle Josh checks into a hotel, presumably to get a better nights rest than he gets at home. Of course the way bad luck follows Josh around we know this is a forlorn hope. Sure enough, quicker than you can say "Georges Méliès" a ghost pops up to make sure Uncle Josh is denied a good nights rest.
A band-leader has arranged seven chairs for the members of his band. When he sits down in the first chair, a cymbal player appears in the same chair, then rises and sits in the next chair. As the cymbal player sits down, a drummer appears in the second chair, and then likewise moves on to the third chair. In this way, an entire band is soon formed, and is then ready to perform.
An astronomer has a terrifying dream.
The scene is a railroad track on the side of a steep mountain, with a tunnel in the background, toward which a train is running at a high rate of speed. At this instant the audience is appalled at the sight of a second train rushing out of the tunnel. Both trains are on the same track and traveling toward each other at a high rate of speed. They collide. Cars and engines are smashed into fragments and thrown down the steep incline. (Edison Catalog)
White’s camera offers several 360-degree pans of views of the fairground, then amazes by tilting up and down the Eiffel Tower, and concludes with a stunning tracking shot to the highest point above Paris. Exhibitors freely grouped films into nascent narratives such as those displayed here. - Bruce Posner
The film is a panorama shot-scene lasting just under a minute. The panorama film, as coined by Lumière, is a moving-camera shot--usually accomplished by placing the camera on a moving transport, such as a boat or train.
Directed by Robert W. Paul.
Madame Ondine performs a serpentine dance surrounded by big cats.
A machine churns out sausages on one side and spits out hats on the other. The director of this film is not credited in any contemporary catalogues or trade publications, or attributed to anyone by scholars or primary sources.
“A marvelously clear picture taken from the top of the elevator of the Eiffel Tower during going up and coming down of the car. This wonderful tower is 1,000 feet in height, and the picture produces a most sensational effect. As the camera leaves the ground and rises to the top of the tower, the enormous white city opens out to the view of the astonished spectator. Arriving at the top of the tower, a bird's eye view of the Exposition looking toward the Trocadero, and also toward the Palace of Electricity, is made, and the camera begins its descent. The entire trip is shown on a 200-foot film. 30.00. We furnish the ascent in 125 foot film.” (Edison film catalog)
A cartoonist defies reality when he draws objects that become three-dimensional after he lifts them off his sketch pad.
A dancer personifying Winter, dances in the snow. "L'Hiver: Danse de la neige" is the fourth and last film of the series DANSE DES SAISONS. "Le Printemps: Danse des roses", "L'Eté: Danse de la moisson" and "L'Automne: Danse des vendanges" are lost or unlocated.
“Showing the entire height of this wonderful structure from the base of the dome and return, with the great Paris Exposition in the background, looking down Champs de Mars. A most realistic picture.” According to Edison film historian Charles Musser, this film features the first camera tilt among the company's surviving oeuvre.
This film is part of the Mitchell and Kenyon collection - an amazing visual record of everyday life in Britain at the beginning of the twentieth century.
A turn-of-the-last-century hand-tinted short, which features two women, Miss Lally and Miss Julyett, dancing at a ball. By the legendary French filmmaker Alice Guy (attributed only, but not confirmed in any primary sources).
Two sets of images are superimposed. From the side, we see a two-masted ship. Across the deck walks a skeleton. It sits down, its legs akimbo. The legs separate and continue a dance while the body of the skeleton faces us and the skull moves its jaw bone. It rises and the legs rejoin the skull and body for an additional jig back and forth on deck.
A cleverly conceived picture of a little boy and girl with building blocks. The little girl has erected a pretty structure, which the boy proceeds to demolish with pokes of his fingers. When the demolition of the house is completed, the film is shown in reverse, and the little building comes back to its original form in a most marvellous manner.
A shot of a busy street in Paris is shown in reverse.
An elderly gentleman in a silk hat sits on a stool in front of a store on the main street of town. He has a telescope that focuses on the ankle of a young woman who is a short distance away. Her husband catches the gent looking. What will the two men do now?
George Mélies made a version of this a few years later, often titled Une Indigestion, but Guy-Blaché’s earlier film Chirurgie Fin de Siecle (1900) is more widely available. And it’s not one to watch the night before an operation. In this clinic, a sign pleads “On est prie de ne pas crier/Please do not cry”, and the doctors set about the patient with saws, cheerily hacking off limbs, and then slopping them into a bucket, all the while arguing ferociously with each other. They then reattach arms and legs from a bucket of “exchange pieces” (using glue) before re-animating their victim, I mean patient, with bellows. (from http://silentlondon.co.uk/2015/01/23/10-disgusting-moments-in-silent-cinema/)
