Professor Barbenfouillis and five of his colleagues from the Academy of Astronomy travel to the Moon aboard a rocket propelled by a giant cannon. Once on the lunar surface, the bold explorers face the many perils hidden in the caves of the mysterious planet.
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.
Divers go to work on a wrecked ship (the battleship Maine that was blown up in Havana harbour during the Spanish-American War), surrounded by curiously disproportionate fish.
A fairy godmother magically turns Cinderella's rags to a beautiful dress, and a pumpkin into a coach. Cinderella goes to the ball, where she meets the Prince - but will she remember to leave before the magic runs out? Méliès based the art direction on engravings by Gustave Doré. First known example of a fairy-tale adapted to film, and the first film to use dissolves to go from one scene to another.
In a medieval castle, a dark magician thought to be Mephistopheles conjures up a series of bizarre creatures and events in order to torment a pair of interloping cavaliers.
One of the greatest of black art pictures. The conjurer appears before the audience, with his head in its proper place. He then removes his head, and throwing it in the air, it appears on the table opposite another head, and both detached heads sing in unison. The conjurer then removes it a third time. You then see all three of his heads, which are exact duplicates, upon the table at one time, while the conjurer again stands before the audience with his head perfectly intact, singing in unison with the three heads upon the table. He closes the picture by bowing himself from the stage.
A man takes off his clothes in preparation for bed, only for new clothes to spontaneously generate, leading to comical consternation.
A divinely inspired peasant woman becomes an army captain for France and then is martyred after she is captured.
A green-skinned demon places a woman and two courtiers into a flaming cauldron.
Two impish clowns construct a magic lantern. They prop it up at an angle, and use it to project pictures onto a wall. When the picture show ends, they open up the lantern to reveal a group of dancing girls inside - and this is only the first of the indications that this lantern really is magical.
At the royal court, a prince is presenting the princess whom he is pledged to marry when a witch suddenly appears. Though driven off, the witch soon returns, summons some of her servants, and carries off the princess. A rescue party is quickly organized, but the unfortunate captive has been taken to a strange, forbidding realm, from where it will be impossible to rescue her without some special help.
A woman arrives home after the ball. Her servant helps her undress and bathe.
A priest is officiating at a convent, when suddenly he is transformed into the devil, who frightens away the nuns and turns the place into pandemonium.
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 man rents an apartment and furnishes it in remarkable fashion.
The entire story of Christmastide is here depicted. The scene opens in a large boudoir of an apparently wealthy man's home. His children, assisted by their governess, are about to retire. Before lying down they hang up their stockings on the edge of the bed. The picture changes and night appears. We see the housetops of the town and angels are flying about depositing packages in each of the chimneys. (Edison Catalog)
The first movie ever censored for political reasons. The title refers to the then contemporaneous Dreyfus affair in which a Jewish military officer was falsely convicted of treason, and it was alleged that he was framed due to anti-semitism.
One of eleven installments of The Dreyfus Affair (L'affaire Dreyfus), a docudrama reconstructing the historical Dreyfus Affair, which was still playing out as the series was being filmed. This film is the last of the 11 installments in the "Dreyfus Affair" film series by Georges Melies. Notable for the fact that this last segment was banned from the public as disputes broke up at the viewing of it, and today it is one of two films that is currently not available to the public.
The leader of a marching band demonstrates an unusual way of writing music.
A science fantasy film that deals with an extraordinary race to the north pole by rival parties of balloonists. Based on the novel "The Adventures of Captain Hatteras" by Jules Verne.
