Émile Cohl mixes live-action and stop-motion animation in this charming evocation of the power of imagination. A magician shapes his cane into a hoop with strange properties for a young girl. Costume changes and city promenades give way towards greater abstraction as the film becomes absorbed by what goes on inside the ring.
Mr. Jones at the Ball is a 1908 American silent short comedy film, part of the once-popular Biograph series centered around the titular Jones and his long-suffering wife. In this film, Jones rips his suit pants and chaos ensues.
This French film isn't that well known today but it will mainly appeal to those film buffs with a thing for early cinema or those wanting to see some fantasy sequences but those there will probably be disappointed. The film runs just a few seconds short of four minutes as several women are dressed up as bees dancing around their hive. The "Queen Bee" goes to take a nap and she's attacked by a spider. The spider sequence is what gets this film a mention by fantasy fans but sadly this scene takes place around the 3:13 mark and lasts just a few seconds.
Macbeth usurps the Scottish throne by murdering his predecessor.
This Georges Melies film is one of several to appear in only a fragment form. The film opens up with a title card explaining what happens in the missing parts of the movie. Basically a man wants to give some flowers to a stage star but a prankster instead gives them to an obese cleaning woman.
The silent Spanish version of the story of Don Juan Tenorio.
Early Balkan footage.
A gorilla escapes from its master on a ship, breaks into a young woman's home, and kills her. The woman's fiancé, Jim, who had visited earlier, is framed for the murder by the police. The famous detective Sherlock Holmes reads about the case, investigates, and uses his deductive reasoning (playing the violin, finding the gorilla). Holmes exposes the real killer (the gorilla and its master) and frees Jim just before he's convicted, revealing the true sequence of events in court.
Mack Sennett appears as a man in the bar and in the wedding party in this film produced by the Biograph Company.
Three woman playing a game of catch leads to one of them exposing herself as she gets stuck whilst peering out the window.
Here's a travelogue that takes its audience to Palermo and shows them the big sights, and the hidden ones. It ends with a slow but impressive panorama shot of the skyline.
In one of his dreams, Don Quixote is fighting monsters. Having vanquished them, he goes to put on his armor, only to be met with a succession of strange events: first the armor appears occupied by a creature with stretching limbs, then a lovely young woman appears and sprouts butterfly wings. As Quixote approaches her, the wings become giant tentacles and attack him. Just as Quixote is fighting back and reaching for his lance, he wakes up to find himself pummeling his servant Sancho Panza. This film is currently presumed lost.
It is the only known surviving film footage from the 1908 Rodman Wanamaker-sponsored expedition to record American Indian life in the west, filmed and produced both for an educational screening at Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia and to document what Wanamaker and photographer Joseph K. Dixon considered a “vanishing race.” Dixon and his son Roland shot motion picture film as well as thousands of photographs (most of the photographs are archived at Indiana University). This film captures life on Crow Agency, Crow Fair and a recreation of the Battle of Little Big Horn featuring four of Custer’s Crow scouts.
A young Roman soldier and his sweetheart are embracing each other fondly and making their vows. The next scene shows the public square, where it is announced that war has been proclaimed. The old priest addresses the populace, telling them that he has chosen for them a great leader who is none other than this young man.
Stenka Razin is the leader of a group of outlaws who live a life of revelry and carousing along the Volga River and in the nearby forests. When Razin becomes distracted by a captured foreign princess and starts to dote on her, his men are displeased, feeling that he is neglecting them and their usual activities. Soon they come up with a plot, in the hopes of turning Razin against the princess.
An enthusiastic young couple is astounded with modern technology's giant leaps in the fascinating field of electricity.
A Boer woman and her daughter are captured by Zulu warriors.
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.
Stable hostler Joe loves his wife Annie, but she leaves him and their child for a wealthy gentleman, only to die destitute in London, where Joe's enduring love brings her solace in her final moments.
