What Is Home Without the Boarder (1901)

A magician explores two halves of his self: The Dwarf and the Giant.

A very enthusiastic magician performs several tricks.

A sorceress conjures up a bevy of beauties for a bachelor to peruse.

A clown performs various feats of magic based on his ability to detach and reattach different parts of his body.

A man attempts to engender a transformation of a giant worm into a butterfly.

The scene is similar to that seen at Coney Island, where a number of shows are constantly going on.

A family sits down to enjoy a meal that ends up being fraught with complications.

A magician performs tricks involving three women, who are sometimes merged together into one corpulent female.

With the cameraman atop a moving train car the viewer is given a one minute glimpse of a French urban area.

A conjurer (along with two duplicates) conjure up (and then cause to vanish) a beautiful woman head-first.

A magician's hat offers many surprises.

A magician transforms a woman into a portrait of herself, then restores her to life.

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 boy is fishing in a stream when some others see an opportunity for mischief.

George Mélies made a version of this a few years later, often titled Une Indigestion, but Guy-Blaché’s earlier film Chirurgie Fin de Siecle (1900) is more widely available. And it’s not one to watch the night before an operation. In this clinic, a sign pleads “On est prie de ne pas crier/Please do not cry”, and the doctors set about the patient with saws, cheerily hacking off limbs, and then slopping them into a bucket, all the while arguing ferociously with each other. They then reattach arms and legs from a bucket of “exchange pieces” (using glue) before re-animating their victim, I mean patient, with bellows. (from http://silentlondon.co.uk/2015/01/23/10-disgusting-moments-in-silent-cinema/)

Alone in his room at an inn, a lustful old man is haunted by spirits.

Divers go to work on a wrecked ship (the battleship Maine that was blown up in Havana harbour during the Spanish-American War), surrounded by curiously disproportionate fish.

Two crooks throw a lady off a roof, and a hapless policeman tries to capture them.

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.

A prince gets the help of a fairy to aid in his conflict with a wizard.