The Impossible Voyage

The Impossible Voyage 1904

7.20

Using every known means of transportation, several savants from the Geographic Society undertake a journey through the Alps to the Sun which finishes under the sea.

1904

The Terrible Turkish Executioner

The Terrible Turkish Executioner 1904

6.10

In a public place in Constantinople at the corner of a bazaar, the executioner is seated upon a stone and is resting from his daily labors while eating a crust of bread. Suddenly there come running into the place a lot of Turkish men and women preceding some Turkish policemen, who drag along four prisoners in chains. The policemen shut up the four prisoners in the pillory. Their four heads stick up through the huge plank, which is provided with four openings. One of the policemen urges the executioner to decapitate the prisoners. He accordingly seizes a mighty sabre and cuts off by a single stroke the four heads, which roll upon the ground.

1904

A Fire in a Burlesque Theatre

A Fire in a Burlesque Theatre 1904

4.50

This short, otherwise unremarkable feature is of some interest because of the way that it unabashedly caters to the tastes that it perceived in its audiences. Besides combining the elements of the risqué 'blue' movies of the era with the popularity of movies about fires, it also attempted to use the combination to get extra mileage out of it. The movie's title summarises the setup, and most of the footage shows firefighters using ladders to rescue stage girls, clad in portions of their costumes, from an upper level. Although it all seems pretty tame by today's standards, it no doubt provided its male viewers with some brief moments of excitement as the various women hurried down the ladders with their costumes in disarray. (IMDb)

1904

The Bewitched Trunk

The Bewitched Trunk 1904

4.20

A medieval magician performs a magic show involving a long ornate trunk in which he makes his assistants appear, disappear, and transform into other people.

1904

The Mermaid

The Mermaid 1904

5.56

A magician conjures up a mermaid while fishing.

1904

Maniac Chase

Maniac Chase 1904

6.20

A “madman” escapes prison and the torments of his warders.

1904

The Clockmaker's Dream

The Clockmaker's Dream 1904

5.00

A weary clock-maker dozes off in a chair. While he is asleep, three women suddenly appear in the midst of his shop. They proceed to show the sleeping clock-maker some new kinds of clocks that they know how to make.

1904

Panorama View, Street Car Motor Room

Panorama View, Street Car Motor Room 1904

5.70

A camera moving forward on an overhead crane gives a traveling view of men working on machinery. Carts carrying parts and pieces of machinery pass by on rails; cranes lift machinery; and men perform their various duties, including hammering objects. (Library of Congress)

1904

Treloar and Miss Marshall, Prize Winners at the Physical Culture Show in Madison Square Garden

Treloar and Miss Marshall, Prize Winners at the Physical Culture Show in Madison Square Garden 1904

6.00

Opens with a woman posing on a pedestal, dressed in a white body leotard with a sash tied at her hips. Marshall continues with various feminine poses, reminiscent of classic Greek statuary, to accentuate her figure. Film cuts to Treloar posed on the bare stage without a pedestal. He wears brief leopard-skin trunks or short tunic, wrist bands, and Roman-looking laced sandals. His poses accentuate the muscular development of his upper body, particularly that of his arms, and include movements that make the muscles jump. Treloar finishes with a slight nod to the camera.

1904

Buy Your Own Cherries

Buy Your Own Cherries 1904

4.70

A barmaid plies a swell with smiles and with cherries from a box that's just been delivered. When she refuses a cherry to a roughly-dressed tradesman who runs a tab at the bar, he pays off his debt in a huff, using all his week's pay. He then storms penniless and without provisions into his ill-furnished house where his wife and two children, ill-clad and ill-fed, cower. Is there any hope for him and for his family? If he does realize how low he's sunk, what help is there to lift him up? Will the family ever know the taste of cherries?

1904

Burglary at Night

Burglary at Night 1904

5.90

A man hides his valuables under his mattress before going to sleep, blissfully unaware of the two burglars on his roof.

1904

A Moonlight Serenade

A Moonlight Serenade 1904

5.20

Pierrot goes to the house of his love to serenade her, but her father kicks him out. Soon the moon and its goddess Diana come towards the man and offers him something better.

1904

The Christmas Angel

The Christmas Angel 1904

5.40

A poor family in a rundown house where snow falls through the broken roof, there's no coal to heat the pathetic little stove, mother is sick, father sends daughter out to beg. Rejected by other beggars, the girl collapses in the snow…

1904

The Untamable Whiskers

The Untamable Whiskers 1904

6.30

The background of this picture represents a scene along the beautiful river Seine in Paris. A gentleman enters, and taking a blackboard from the side of the picture, he draws on it a sketch of a novelist. Then, standing in the centre, he causes the living features of his sketch to appear in the place of his own, which is utterly devoid of whiskers. The change is made so mysteriously that the eye cannot notice it until one sees quite another person in the place of the first. Again another sketch is shown on the board, this one being that of a miser; then an English cockney; a comic character; a French policeman, and last of all, the grinning visage of Mephistopheles. It is almost impossible to give this film a more definite description; suffice it to say that it is something entirely new in motion pictures and is sure to please. (Méliès Catalog)

1904

Scarecrow Pump

Scarecrow Pump 1904

5.00

A pump stands outside a farmhouse, just inside a picket fence. A boy comes out of the house and dresses up the pump handle and its post as a scarecrow, so that he can play a practical joke on a drunken acquaintance when he passes by. The boy then hides and waits for him, but things do not turn out quite as he planned.

1904

Tchin-Chao, the Chinese Conjurer

Tchin-Chao, the Chinese Conjurer 1904

4.80

A Chinese conjurer stands next to a table, it becomes two tables. A fan becomes a parasol, lanterns appear and disappear. The conjurer spins the open parasol in front of himself, and a dog leaps out from behind it. The dog becomes a woman, then a masked man appears. The conjurer sits them each on a box a few feet apart: suddenly the woman and man have changed places. The disappearing and the transfers continue in front of a simple backdrop.

1904

Dog Factory

Dog Factory 1904

4.50

A brief vaudeville-style demonstration of a "Dog Transformator," a machine that instantly turns dogs into sausages, and amazingly, sausages back into dogs.

1904