John and Tom Wilkins are brothers and most divergent in natures. John is a clergyman and a noble, upright fellow, while Tom is a scapegrace, wild, reckless and unscrupulous. Not having the parental guidance so essential in youth, his father being dead and his mother blind, he drifted into bad company, the contaminating influence deeply affecting his susceptible nature.
In a British barrack in India is confined a tamed gorilla which has conceived a hatred for one of the Hindoo attendants, owing to the barbarous treatment which the Hindoo accords the beast. This attendant proves to be a traitor to the British interests, and avails himself of his opportunities to possess himself of military papers and secrets which he carries to his friends in the rebel camp. (Moving Picture World)
While Monsieur and his friends are making music, a fire breaks out in the apartment. The little girl is saved, but the emotion causes the mother to lose her reason. She is cured only by hearing once again the air that was played during that fatal night. The Gaumont catalogue styled the film, "Très pathétique".
A boy takes pictures of everything, including some embarrassing situations. When he projects the pictures on a wall for everyone to see, his father spanks him and smashes the camera.
Lost Polish comedy short from 1908. Not to be confused with the 1916 remake of which a small portion survives.
A poorly compensated bank clerk is, we may say, to that trying position of "Tantalus" in sight of tons of money but not a dollar of his own. This became more torturing as time went on, until at last, when the bank was arranging to ship a large quantity of cash to the West to relieve the recent money stringency, he made up his mind to heed the solicitude of that specter which had haunted him. Listening to the instructions given to the bank's messenger as to the shipment of the funds, he hustles off to a gang of crooks in whose company he had fallen.
The opium fiend is seen in a den, puffing on this terrible narcotic. He then falls fast asleep and dreams that he is at home with his wife. He asks for something to drink and he is given wine, which he does not care for, and he is finally given some bottled beer and a glass, but he complains that the glass is too small and he gets a very large sized glass receptacle, into which his wife and maid servant pour the contents of the bottle. As he is about to drink the glass passes from his hand mysteriously, sailing through the room and out of the window to the moon…
The widowed elderly mother of three adult children, two sons and a daughter, wishing to relieve herself of the burden of care of her property, decides to divide it up among her children. To her son Charles, a wild but kind young fellow, she leaves a small amount, feeling that he will soon run through it. The good-hearted boy is perfectly satisfied, believing in the wisdom of his mother's actions. He assumes she will find a home with one of his siblings, who are married and settled. The old woman moves in with her married son, but is driven out by his wife over an argument about her young granddaughter. She is forced to move into a squalid apartment in a cheap tenement house, but is evicted for failing to pay her rent. Mack Sennett appears as a bartender in this film.
A mythological scene with the most beautiful effect.
Silent film from Georges Méliès, presumed to be lost.
This Georges Melies film is only available in a five-minute fragment. The film starts off with a title card setting up the events. An elderly miser keep all of his money to himself and refuses to help people no matter what they might need. We see him turn away a few people and then portions of the film are missing and we pick up later in the story as the old man is scared of something (apparently someone stole his money).
In ancient Egypt, a princess is executed after being caught in an affair with a Theban warrior, with her soul sealed inside a vase. Centuries later, a professor in Boston brings the vase to his home, with chaos ensuing.
María Rosa is a Spanish silent film directed by Juan María Codina.
An old merchant gets lost in the forest and arrives at a magnificent garden where he sits and picks some magnificent roses. Suddenly, the hideous Beast emerges from the ground in a burst of flames and condemns him to death unless one of his three daughters agrees to marry him.
A small village in Aragón, Spain, at the end of the 19th century. After being caught by her father fooling around with Melchor, an unscrupulous womanizer, being disgraced and losing everything, young Dolores is forced to take to the roads in search of work.
This is not only a colored film of great beauty, but one showing a series of clever trick pictures in which great ingenuity on the part of the operator is exhibited.
Woman Draped in Patterned Handkerchiefs is a 1908 British short silent documentary film, directed by George Albert Smith as a showcase his new Kinemacolor system, which features a woman displaying assorted tartan cloths, both draped on her body and waved semaphore-style. The patterned handkerchiefs are, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, “presumably the same cloths featured in Tartans of Scottish Clans (1906), this time shown from various angles.”
The first scene presents before the astonished eyes of the spectators a solid piece of marble, which the minute it is placed on a table seems to take life, and one can follow a snake-like line branding on the polished face of the stone the name of the house of Pathé Frères. As soon as this stone has been engraved, as by magic, a handsome young lady appears with a huge lump of clay covered with a cloth. As soon as the cloth is removed from the soft mass it starts whirling and turning as if stricken mad, and one is asking one's self what all the contentions are going to lead to, when the vague shape of an animal not yet discernible seems to appear, and before one has time to make one's mind as to the category of brutes to which it belongs one sees the form of a remarkably well made orang-utan modelled out of the clay, who calmly smokes his pipe. Then the statue is removed by the same winning young lady and another covered block of the same substance is carried forward.
A young couple are enjoying a romantic interlude in the young woman's home, when her father discovers them and angrily chases the young man out of the house. They thus decide to elope, and they make plans accordingly. But as they are leaving, a thief discovers their plans, and he decides to turn the situation to his own advantage.
