A Dinner Under Difficulties (1899) User Reviews

Leaves Me Hungry For More

[boblipton · 6/10 · 3 November 2023]

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.

Indifferent little trick film

[kekseksa · 7 September 2015]

This rather indifferent little one-minute trick film (or a clone of it) does appear to survive and is more or less as the later Repas fantastique(1900) but less interesting. A copy from the Biblioteca Española in Madrid is available on the internet but is incorrectly (and most improbably dated 1905) and attributed to Segundo de Chomón. The film is more or less as described in the Selig catalogue but there are three people dining (not a couple and not young) and no sign of any maid. The star of the show is however the giant bottle of Scotch whose appearance on the scene is unmistakable. It is surprisingly crude for a Méliès film (far cruder than the 1900 version) and may be an inferior copy made by someone else.