Three sit down for a meal, but the furniture continually transforms and vanishes, as does the whiskey in this fragment of a Melies movie.
A bit less than a minute of the film survives. Although we can figure out what goes on from other films -- not only imitations by other film makers, but the many variants that Melies had and would make -- those of us who take pleasure in Melies' work are confounded by the survival rate of these very early films: not just Melies but all films of the era. We know the road that cinema eventually took, the trail blazed by George Smith in England. It is a good road, but we are left wondering about the many roads not taken.
A bit less than a minute of the film survives. Although we can figure out what goes on from other films -- not only imitations by other film makers, but the many variants that Melies had and would make -- those of us who take pleasure in Melies' work are confounded by the survival rate of these very early films: not just Melies but all films of the era. We know the road that cinema eventually took, the trail blazed by George Smith in England. It is a good road, but we are left wondering about the many roads not taken.