Ben Hur 1907
The first adaptation of Lew Wallace's novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.
The first adaptation of Lew Wallace's novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.
During the Paris Commune, a boy runs across trouble at the barricade.
A pig dressed in fancy clothes flirts with a pretty girl, but she humiliates him and tears off his suit; she then makes him dance for her affections.
A group of travellers go into a house for protection. Little do they know, it is filled with ghosts who make unusual things happen to them.
A traveler stays the night at a rural inn, but gets no rest as he is tormented by various spectres and mysterious happenings.
The film, a parody of the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, follows a fisherman, Yves, who dreams of traveling by submarine to the bottom of the ocean, where he encounters both realistic and fanciful sea creatures, including a chorus of naiads played by dancers from the Théâtre du Châtelet. Méliès's design for the film includes cut-out sea animals patterned after Alphonse de Neuville's illustrations for Verne's novel.
As an older man and a youth are eating at the table, the older man decides to amuse himself by using pepper to make the boy sneeze. Later, the boy retaliates by sneaking into the older man's room and putting pepper in his handkerchief, hairbrush, and clothing. But things quickly get out of hand when the sneezing that results begins to disrupt the whole town.
In this film, Méliès concocts a combination fairy- and morality tale about the foolishness of trying to look too deeply into the workings of an unstable and inscrutable universe. At a medieval school, an old astronomer begins to teach a class of young men, all armed with telescopes, about the art of scrutinising an imminent eclipse. When a mechanical clock strikes twelve, all the young men rush to the windows and fix their telescopes on the heavens.
A family troupe of acrobats, made up to appear Japanese, perform various unbelievable stunts in front of the camera, achieved through a trick of the camera.
A demonic magician attempts to perform his act in a strange grotto, but is confronted by a Good Spirit who opposes him.
The artist studio is decorated with a rug, a chaise lounge, a small table, a plinth, a couple of copies of classic sculptures, a vase with flowers, a few prints on the walls, and on the wood paneled lower half of the wall, an 8-pointed star [Saturn-Film's logo]. The artist is wearing a white shirt over his grey trousers, shirt and necktie, and he is wearing black shoes. With hammer and chisel, he applies the last touches on his last piece of sculpture - The Three Graces, standing nude on a rectangular podium covered with a white bed-shirt. He steps back, contemplates his work, and rejoices on the beauty he has achieved. He goes out momentarily, and brings a bottle of champagne and a glass; before drinking, he makes a toast to his finished statue. He drinks, smokes a cigarette, and contemplates his work - until he falls asleep on the chaise lounge. Only then do The Three Graces stir, and tip-toe around their creator. One even dares to approach her lips to the artist's.
The Bogie Man's cave is one of the many triumphs of set design for Georges Méliès. More unusual for the pioneering French director is the grisly turn when the monster chops up his servant for a steaming pot of stew. But the Bogie Man’s guilty conscience weighs on him, plaguing his sleep with even more fantastic visions of just deserts. (Max Goldberg, Fandor)
An extremely clumsy man tries to clean a woman's house with disastrous results.
A combination of the story of Goldlocks and the Three Bears with the true story of how Teddy Roosevelt spared a bear cub after killing its mother while hunting, an event which led to the popularization of the teddy bear. Goldilocks goes to sleep in the bears' home after watching six teddy bears dance and do acrobatics, viewing them through a knothole in the wall. When she is awoken by the returning bear family, they give chase through the woods, but she runs to the aid of the Old Rough Rider, who saves her.
A boy spreads glue all over town.
John, who loves the bottle a little too much, is one of a group of sightseers. Too drunk to follow the party, the reeling drunkard remains on the site of a ruin where he starts having hallucinations.
An old woman begs a young men to carry her heavy bundle of firewood. The man refuses: he rather goes to sleep. The woman, who turns out to be a witch, punishes him with terrible apparitions.
Early slapstick short from Louis Feuillade involving runaways, except that, instead of it being a runaway horse (see Griffith's THE CURTAIN POLE for an example), it is a cartful of what appear to be hundred-pound pumpkins that get away, rushing hither and yon, down sewers, up chimneys, pursued by the drayer, a couple of other people and a very unwilling donkey.
A peddler of "the best glue" sets up his outdoor stall. A crowd gathers for a demonstration. As he gives his pitch, two observant cops decide drive off his customers and close him down, much to his fury. He seeks revenge as they sit on a park bench.
A piano entices anyone who comes near.