The Artist and the Dummy (1900)
Genre :
Runtime : 1M
Director : Georges Méliès
Synopsis
A very simple gag film as a young lady substitutes herself for a dummy in order to play a practical joke on an artist.
The magician appears upon the stage with an imp as his assistant. The imp holds a piece of cloth in his hand. At the command of the magician the cloth is suddenly transformed into a beautiful girl, clad in tights. A barrel is then introduced and the girl enters one end.
A human skeleton is placed upon a table by an attendant. When the attendant leaves the room the skeleton begins kicking his legs and throwing his arms about and suddenly turns into a magician. The magician produces an egg, performing several sleight-of-hand tricks, and places it upon the table with the small end downward. He then crudely draws a human face upon the shell, and the egg immediately begins growing larger and larger until it reaches the size of a normal head.
Two comic characters, Jack Jags and Dum Dum, perform slapstick comedy on stage.
In a room filled with jugglers' properties of enormous size a prestidigitateur dressed in eccentric costume enters with his assistant. The servant, believing that he would be comfortable in an armchair, sits down in it, but finds that it conceals a bucket of water, in which he falls. The juggler brings a large empty cask and puts it upon a table and fills it up with several pails of water.
A boy is led into the frame by two nursemaids who give him a big ball to play with. For the remainder of the film heads appear and disappear, stage props blow up and turn into other objects or people, and finally Bob Kick disappears.
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?
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.
Another short of Georges.
A magician shows tricks with money.
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.
A prince gets the help of a fairy to aid in his conflict with a wizard.
Melies and his crew perform magic tricks.
A box of valued jewels is placed inside the tomb of Delphi. A thief breaks into the tomb and steals it, but soon the ghost of Delphi appears and puts a curse on him.
Bewitched trunk
On a city street, a number of men take advantage of an old drunken bum.
“This is an absolutely new and extraordinary subject. A juggler takes in succession about a dozen eggs out of his servant's mouth. He breaks all the eggs into a hat, and after having beaten them up after the manner of a cook, he extracts an egg as large as the hat itself. As soon as he sets this egg on the table there appears a tiny dancing girl, full of life, as big as a baby's doll, and who performs on the table some beautiful stage dances. All of a sudden she increases to the size of a ordinary woman, and jumping on the floor she delights the audience with her turns. The juggler and the dancing girl disappear in the most extraordinary way.” (Méliès Catalog)
A colonel in the military receives an unorthodox shower, an unorthodox shower indeed!
The professor shows his power to Mephisto by mysteriously placing a young lady in a swing. Mephisto then shows his power by making the young lady disappear from the swing, to the surprise of the professor. The professor makes another mystic pass and produces a second young lady then in the swing, and also a skeleton.
The Melies version of the old Rip Van Winkle tale.
Méliès appears as a court jester (a “triboulet” in French). He pulls 18th century noblemen out of a trunk and arranges them on a pyramid-shaped stage. Next, he transforms the gentlemen into fancy ladies.