The scene is a railroad track on the side of a steep mountain, with a tunnel in the background, toward which a train is running at a high rate of speed. At this instant the audience is appalled at the sight of a second train rushing out of the tunnel. Both trains are on the same track and traveling toward each other at a high rate of speed. They collide. Cars and engines are smashed into fragments and thrown down the steep incline. (Edison Catalog)
The famous acrobats in the above title appear in a marvellous acrobatic act. There are three barrels arranged on the stage. The boys, blindfolded, stand on opposite sides of the stage, and jump from one barrel into the other until they both land in the same barrel at the same time. They then jump backwards onto the stage over the two barrels. One table is then mounted upon another and the center barrel is placed on top. The brothers still blindfolded jump one each into a barrel and from them to the first to the second table and from the second table into the barrel on top of the second table. They then jump backwards onto the stage. This is pronounced by show people to be the most marvellous acrobatic feat that has ever been introduced. (Edison Catalog)
A magician performs tricks. First with a top hat, then with his audience.
A magical glowing white motorcar ignores policemen, drives up buildings, flies through outer space, and can transform into a horse and carriage.
Come Along, Do! is an 1898 British short silent comedy film, produced and directed by Robert W. Paul. The film was of 1 minute duration, but only forty-some seconds have survived. The whole of the second shot is only available as film stills. The film features an elderly man at an art gallery who takes a great interest in a nude statue to the irritation of his wife. The film has cinematographic significance as the first example of film continuity. It was, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "one of the first films to feature more than one shot." In the first shot, an elderly couple is outside an art exhibition having lunch and then follow other people inside through the door. The second shot shows what they do inside.
A barmaid plies a swell with smiles and with cherries from a box that's just been delivered. When she refuses a cherry to a roughly-dressed tradesman who runs a tab at the bar, he pays off his debt in a huff, using all his week's pay. He then storms penniless and without provisions into his ill-furnished house where his wife and two children, ill-clad and ill-fed, cower. Is there any hope for him and for his family? If he does realize how low he's sunk, what help is there to lift him up? Will the family ever know the taste of cherries?
An old proprietor is startled and haunted by the strange happenings inside his curiosity shop.
A satire on the way that audiences unaccustomed to the cinema didn't know how to react to the moving images on a screen - in this film, an unsophisticated (and stereotypical) country yokel is alternately baffled and terrified, in the latter case by the apparent approach of a steam train.
An artist draws the head of a pretty girl, takes the drawing off the paper and places it on a small table, turning the image into the head of a real woman. He then continuous drawing the lady, one body part after the other.
A barber cuts heads off Negro and white customers, who then dismember him.
A stationary camera looks on as two dapper gents play a game of chess. One drinks and smokes, and when he looks away, his opponent moves two pieces. A fight ensues, first with the squirting of a seltzer bottle, then with fisticuffs. The combatants wrestle each other to the floor and continue the fight out of the camera's view, hidden by the table. The waiter arrives to haul both of them out.
A man and a woman talk beside a street near a corner where a cop stands. Just as a horse-drawn cart rounds the corner, the man backs off the sidewalk saying good-by to his companion. The horse and cart flatten him and continue on, out of the camera's stationary range. The cop runs after the cab, the woman dashes to the body. The cop brings back the driver; is the victim dead?
The Waif and the Wizard features the same young man who appeared in Undressing Extraordinary (and who might be early filmmaker Walter Booth). It's another early example of a two-shot film along the lines of Paul's earlier film Come Along Do!. The young man plays a magician who, after completing his act, agrees to go home with the young boy from the audience who helped him perform his tricks. At the boy's home he finds a sick sister and a worried mother being threatened with eviction by her landlord.
A man strolling in a city street is attacked by three assailants. A policeman comes to the rescue and the men struggle with each other.
The surf pounds against a breakwater on which are visible several people standing. The wall looks to be about 20 feet above sea level and extend at least 100 feet into the water. A large wave rolls picturesquely along the wall toward the shore. Smaller waves follow. Then the scene changes to river water flowing. We see both shores: in the foreground a log and tree branch are visible; on the far shore, there appears to be a low wall with trees beyond it. The camera is stationary in both shots.
A tiny fragment of an actuality film of Tom Merry (William Mechem), a 'lightning sketch' caricaturist performing his act for the camera and producing a large profile caricature of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The loss of the rest of the film has bequeathed us 6 seconds that are of Mechem standing next to the completed portrait and sadly, that is all there is. An early film made by Birt Acres for R.W. Paul. (see release information for further detail).
Men expose a fake medium's tricks and take revenge.
The water beats relentlessly against the Hell's Mouth (Boca do Inferno), one of the main natural attractions of Lisbon's west coast, filmed from above almost in a vertical plunge onto the deep, rocky ground.
Four men of different ranks play a game of tetherball on a ship's deck.
