Urtea 1897

A woman arrives home after the ball. Her servant helps her undress and bathe.

A man has an encounter with several spooky apparitions in a castle that is evidently owned by the Devil.

A rocky sea voyage as reenacted by Georges Méliès.

Three military men, seen inside a fortification, are firing on an unseen enemy force. The call for reinforcements but ladders appear signalling the enemy is about to overrun this position.

A weary traveler stops at an inn along the way to get a good night's sleep, but his rest is interrupted by odd happenings when he gets to his room--beds vanishing and re-appearing, candles exploding, pants flying through the air and his shoes walking away by themselves.

A romantic couple are transformed into skeletons via X-Rays. The film combines two very recent innovations: Wilhelm Roentgen's discovery of X-rays in 1895, and Georges Méliès' accidental realisation of the special-effects potential of the jump-cut in 1896.

Angelic and demonic serpentine dance from dawn of cinema. Hand-colored frame by frame. Lumière no. 765 or 765.1 (colorized, different dancer?).

Short clip of a football match, filmed on the Lumière cinematograph, 33 years before FIFA's 1st World Cup.

Mme. Bob Walter performs the serpentine dance.

Wintertime in Lyon. About a dozen people, men and women, are having a snowball fight in the middle of a tree-lined street. The cyclist coming along the road becomes the target of opportunity. He falls off his bicycle. He's not hurt, but he rides back the way he came, as the fight continues.

Swimmers jump into the water from the docks, as a small boat passes by.

The hen house occupies the entire left foreground of the picture, running back to the nearby road. The main foreground is filled with tall grass swept by the wind, the naturalness of which effect is remarkable. A thief appears 'round the corner, carrying a tattered sack. He suspiciously approaches the window, from which two fowl are handed to him by a black confederat, who himself suddenly appears at the window, falling out head first but clinging tenaciously to a fluttering white bird.

The Flicker Alley DVD "Georges Méliès: Encore New Discoveries (1896-1911)" misidentified a partial hand-colored print of the 1906 film "Alchimiste Parafaragaramus ou La cornue infernale" (The Mysterious Retort) as this film, "L'hallucination de l'alchimiste" (An Hallucinated Alchemist) from 1897, which continues to be considered a lost film.

Small glimpse of Paris city life.

An incident of the Franco-Prussian War. It shows the bombardment of a house at Bazeille. It is the animated reproduction of de Neuville's celebrated painting.

A gardener is watering his flowers, when a mischievous boy sneaks up behind his back, and puts a foot on the water hose. The gardener is surprised and looks into the nozzle to find out why the water has stopped coming. The boy then lifts his foot from the hose, whereby the water squirts up in the gardener's face. The gardener chases the boy, grips his ear and slaps him in his buttocks. The boy then runs away and the gardener continues his watering. Three separate versions of this film exist, this is the third version.

Lasting for roughly 50 seconds, it shows the goodbyes of many passersby - first Europeans, then Palestinian Arabs, then Palestinian Jews - as a train leaves Jerusalem.

Cops chase a pair of burglars on the rooftops of the city.

Descent of the Great Pyramid.

A very heavy turret is transported on a truck drawn by a long line of horses. The inscription “Charlemagne 53790K” readable on the turret suggests that this view was shot in the vicinity of Saint-Chamond, a town where there are factories specializing in the construction of heavy steel. It is certainly a turret intended for the battleship “Charlemagne”. In addition, a view projected by the Aléthorama on January 20, 1898 in Saint-Étienne, and entitled “Transportation of the armored turret of Saint-Chamond by a team of 80 horses”, could represent the same event.