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A young woman receives a letter one morning, she is delighted and calls her maid to help her get dressed. In preparation for her appointment, she also calls a hairdresser and the maid prepares the mirrors accordingly. The hairdresser is very taken with the lady of the house and works on her hair, but gets too close to the woman and she tells him to leave the room.Read More »
Johann Schwarzer goes all Melies for this one, with semi-nude ladies magically emerging from behind his umbrella.Read More »
Three young women are smiling and playing in a lake, their nude bodies reflecting in the water, when a forest watcher appears from the wood, and chases them away. They get out of the water, pick their clothes from tree branches, and move away before putting them on. The bearded man seems to be shy, but he is chasing after them through the wood, anyway.Read More »
A young woman finds herself at the mercy of her mischievous friends after she leans out a window to retrieve a dropped ball.Read More »
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In what is considered the first remake in cinema history, prolific French director Georges Méliès directs his first film, depicting a delightful afternoon among friends playing cards over a glass of beer.
It was the first film in Méliès’ prolific career, and thus is number one in his Star Film catalogue. It is a remake of Louis Lumière’s film The Messers. Lumière at Cards, which was released earlier the same year. Along with Georges Méliès himself, his brother Gaston Méliès and daughter Georgette Méliès also appear in the film.
The film, long presumed lost and was rediscovered after 1981Read More »
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A devil conjures up a dancing woman from a mystical flame.
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The Pillar of Fire was the first film to be based on H. Rider Haggard’s 1887 novel She: A History of Adventure. Rather than attempting to tell the whole story of the novel, Méliès used one of its characters as inspiration for a trick film, recalling the scene in the novel in which Ayesha stands amid flames. At least six other adaptations of She were made in the silent era.Read More »
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A housemaid is cleaning a studio. When she sees a sculpture of a nude woman in life-size, lying on a couch, she starts to compare this idealized body with her own. She takes off her clothes one by one, thus revealing her own naked body step by step, and she compares the various parts of her body with those of the statue. The master of the house enters the studio. When he sees his housemaid naked, he tells her to go into the next room, and then goes into that room himself.Read More »
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“The filmmaker took several different scenes shot earlier between 1896 and 1899 and double-printed two sets of images together to create a new artistic creation. The transformation of a stage dance into a unique ciné-dance could only be possible in cinema – Bruce PosnerRead More »
