Alcofribas, The Master Magician (1903)
Genre :
Runtime : 4M
Director : Georges Méliès
Writer : Georges Méliès
Synopsis
Two men in a cave perform magic.
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)
A divinely inspired peasant woman becomes an army captain for France and then is martyred after she is captured.
This is one VIP list you don't want to be on! LA club people have a 'killer' party on a private yacht, except the boat is haunted by the original owner Samantha who died on the maiden voyage.
Magic tricks in a medieval setting.
Alone in his room at an inn, a lustful old man is haunted by spirits.
Three military men, seen inside a fortification, are firing on an unseen enemy force. The call for reinforcements but ladders appear signalling the enemy is about to overrun this position.
A pregnant woman steals things from others on account of her cravings.
Shows the interior of the cell of the Prison Militaire du Cherche-Midi, Paris, where Colonel Henry is confined. He is seated at a table writing a letter, on completion of which he rises and takes a razor out he had concealed in his porte-manteau, with which he cuts his throat. The suicide is discovered by the sergeant of the guard and officers.
Three friends are playing cards in a beer garden. One of them orders drinks. The waitress comes back with a bottle of wine and three glasses on a tray. The man serves his friends. They clink glasses and drink. Then the man asks for a newspaper. He reads a funny story in it and the three friends burst out laughing while the waitress merely smiles.
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 a outlet of Pandemonium.
Frankenstein, a young medical student, trying to create the perfect human being, instead creates a misshapen monster. Made ill by what he has done, Frankenstein is comforted by his fiancée; but on his wedding night he is visited by the monster.
The view from a moving train shows some of the Westinghouse interests and the surrounding areas.
Renée Carl stars in this lively slapstick silent short as a beautiful lady who causes distractions and accidents among the male population as she walks though the streets of Paris.
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.
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 film from 1907 is sadly incomplete as it's only available in a two-minute fragment. The opening title card explains that a painter has just finished his work when his assistant comes in and accidentally drinks varnish. The film then picks up as the painter goes haywire and sends the assistant into the painting.
A magic show.
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 opium fiend is seen in a den, puffing on this terrible narcotic. He then falls fast asleep and dreams that he is at home with his wife. He asks for something to drink and he is given wine, which he does not care for, and he is finally given some bottled beer and a glass, but he complains that the glass is too small and he gets a very large sized glass receptacle, into which his wife and maid servant pour the contents of the bottle. As he is about to drink the glass passes from his hand mysteriously, sailing through the room and out of the window to the moon…
Another magic short of Méliès.