The Lumiere Brothers, as any film enthusiast knows, were 2 influential figures in cinematic history, being the originators of the Cinematograph, an invention which they used to shoot short documentary subjects. The Brothers were mostly know for their films in this genre: they never ventured into the stop-trick used by the cinemagician, Georges Melies; they seldom did any comedy like that of R. W. Paul; and they never even attempted a good exciting melodrama like those by Edwin S. Porter. So this one is a rather different film from them. It's an entertaining "gimmick" film where an actor on a stool (Felicien Trewey, a vaudeville performer) puts on a hat or a wig and acts like that character of the hat he's wearing a couple seconds, before continuing on to the next. While it is meant to be comical, I would place this in the documentary genre too because it's basically a filming of Trewey's act (although he did alter it a bit so it would fit the run-time). Nice to see the Lumieres try something new, even if it is technically another documentary movie.
