The Impossible Voyage 1904
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.
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.
A magician conjures up a mermaid while fishing.
Documentary on the process of hay-making, from the cutting of the grass to the stacking of the hay.
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.
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)
The adventures of an inattentive man who can't look away from his book.
An inquisitor and two of his henchmen burn a woman at the stake. An angel intervenes.
Billy Bitzer filmed 21 short actualities inside the Pittsburgh Westinghouse Works in April and May of 1904. Audiences of the day would have been treated to footage of factory panoramas, women winding armatures and turbines being assembled. These industrial films were produced for the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.
Georges Melies the magician. Melies removes his own head, puts it in a glass box on a stool, then grows another one. Melies lights up a cigarette and blows smoke at his old head. The head gets payback by levitating above Melies and spewing water on him.
A “madman” escapes prison and the torments of his warders.
A French aristocrat, who has recently arrived in America, has placed a personal advertisement in the newspaper...
Rows of women are shown at tables with winding machines. They wind using material from spools behind them, apparently putting the finished products on the table in front of them. Various supervisory staff, male and female, walk through the aisles, checking the work of the women.
A Jew who mocked Jesus on the cross is visited by a devil and an angel.
A sexton reforms after dreaming of abduction by goblins.
A group of men work on various parts of a large generator, assembling the pieces
Chronophotograph record of a ball falling through a soap bubble.
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.
A cook has his hands full with three mischievous devils, who pop in and out of his kitchen.
A large bucket full of molten material is poured into a large container, possibly a mold, by a group of men using machinery. Some other men stoke the fire under the container. When finished pouring, the men lift the bucket up from the container and take it away on a crane. Two men put prods down repeatedly into the container, while others lay covers on top of it.
A brief vaudeville-style demonstration of a "Dog Transformator," a machine that instantly turns dogs into sausages, and amazingly, sausages back into dogs.