The Great Train Robbery 1903
After the train station clerk is assaulted and left bound and gagged, then the departing train and its passengers robbed, a posse goes in hot pursuit of the fleeing bandits.
After the train station clerk is assaulted and left bound and gagged, then the departing train and its passengers robbed, a posse goes in hot pursuit of the fleeing bandits.
This is the first movie version of the famous story. Alice dozes in a garden, awakened by a dithering white rabbit in waistcoat with pocket watch. She follows him down a hole and finds herself in a hall of many doors.
Porter's sequential continuity editing links several shots to form a narrative of firemen responding to a house fire. They leave the station with their horse drawn pumper, arrive on the scene, and effect the safe rescue of a woman from the burning house. But wait, she tells them of her child yet asleep in the burning bedroom...
A green-skinned demon places a woman and two courtiers into a flaming cauldron.
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.
This is a film taken of the execution of Topsy, an elephant employed to help build Luna Park on Coney Island.
The story of Jesus Christ, from the proclamation of His Nativity to His Ascension into heaven. Impressive staging and beautiful hand-coloring distinguish the film from its Passion-play counterparts; Its scale and dynamic crowds prelude the Italian epics to come.
A simple scene of two rather flamboyantly-dressed Edwardian children attempting to feed a spoonful of medicine to a sick kitten. The film is important for being one of the earliest films to cut to a close-up, then back again to the same medium shot as before.
The leader of a marching band demonstrates an unusual way of writing music.
An Egyptian prince has lost his beloved wife and he has sought a dervish who dwells at the base of the sphinx.
A woman being fitted for shoes exposes her ankle to the shoe clerk, who is intrigued. He kisses her, but her chaperone hits him with her umbrella.
A juggler enters upon the scene, picks up a skull, throws it into the air, catches it in his hands, where it is transformed into a handkerchief. The handkerchief, after being twirled about a wand, is changed to a napkin, and afterward to a tablecloth. Out of the table cloth comes a servant.
Pluto, having seen the earth, comes back home amazed at the success of that well-known dance, the "cake-walk." He has brought back with him two noted well-known dancers, who start their favorite dance amidst the flames.
With godly entrapments, Zeus appears on the horizon, engages Hermes as an audience, and tries to throw some thunderbolts. They fizzle. Hephaestus tries to make some repairs but succeeds only in heating the bolts and burning Zeus's hands. Zeus conjures nine muses, but do their incantations help? He dismisses them as well as a visiting Pan, and his fits of pique become counter-productive. Can he get his powers back?
A woman riding a train must contend with the unwelcome advances of a male passenger.
Mary Jane tries to light the oven. When she's unsuccessful, she plays around, getting black boot polish on her face. She mugs before a mirror. Then, it's back to work. When the stove still won't light, she pours in paraffin, winks at the camera, and lights a match. Kaboom! Is there any rest for the foolish, even in the grave?
A magician transforms a woman into a portrait of herself, then restores her to life.
As scene as pleasing as incomprehensible. A juggler summons two chairs, which come to the stage jumping and twirling around. Across the back of these chairs the operator places a sheet of glass on which he lays a box about four inches high. He then takes a table cover, with his servant's help, rolls it up and from the centre emerges a lady, beautifully dressed. At the juggler's order she jumps in the box, in which she completely disappears.
The German legend of a scholar's unholy pact with the Devil would have been very familiar to most moviegoers (at least European ones), so Georges Méliès' early cinematic treatment likely got away with simply offering a fancifully illustrated late episode without the earlier narrative context (however, spoken narration provides some of the latter in this restored print). Tempted by Mephistopheles with all kinds of dancing and ethereal babes, Faust is at first excited and then terrified by the sight of various demons and monsters. The painted-set designers really went hog wild on this one, depicting the (sometimes sexy) torments of subterranean Hell with in bold terms (even when ballerinas prance in the foreground). (Dennis Harvey, Fandor)