The Impossible Voyage 1904
Using every known means of transportation, several savants from the Geographic Society undertake a journey through the Alps to the Sun which finishes under the sea.
Using every known means of transportation, several savants from the Geographic Society undertake a journey through the Alps to the Sun which finishes under the sea.
A magician conjures up a mermaid while fishing.
The background of this picture represents a scene along the beautiful river Seine in Paris. A gentleman enters, and taking a blackboard from the side of the picture, he draws on it a sketch of a novelist. Then, standing in the centre, he causes the living features of his sketch to appear in the place of his own, which is utterly devoid of whiskers. The change is made so mysteriously that the eye cannot notice it until one sees quite another person in the place of the first. Again another sketch is shown on the board, this one being that of a miser; then an English cockney; a comic character; a French policeman, and last of all, the grinning visage of Mephistopheles. It is almost impossible to give this film a more definite description; suffice it to say that it is something entirely new in motion pictures and is sure to please. (Méliès Catalog)
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.
This short, otherwise unremarkable feature is of some interest because of the way that it unabashedly caters to the tastes that it perceived in its audiences. Besides combining the elements of the risqué 'blue' movies of the era with the popularity of movies about fires, it also attempted to use the combination to get extra mileage out of it. The movie's title summarises the setup, and most of the footage shows firefighters using ladders to rescue stage girls, clad in portions of their costumes, from an upper level. Although it all seems pretty tame by today's standards, it no doubt provided its male viewers with some brief moments of excitement as the various women hurried down the ladders with their costumes in disarray.
A Chinese conjurer stands next to a table, it becomes two tables. A fan becomes a parasol, lanterns appear and disappear. The conjurer spins the open parasol in front of himself, and a dog leaps out from behind it. The dog becomes a woman, then a masked man appears. The conjurer sits them each on a box a few feet apart: suddenly the woman and man have changed places. The disappearing and the transfers continue in front of a simple backdrop.
A poor family in a rundown house where snow falls through the broken roof, there's no coal to heat the pathetic little stove, mother is sick, father sends daughter out to beg. Rejected by other beggars, the girl collapses in the snow…
A man hides his valuables under his mattress before going to sleep, blissfully unaware of the two burglars on his roof.
Opens with a woman posing on a pedestal, dressed in a white body leotard with a sash tied at her hips. Marshall continues with various feminine poses, reminiscent of classic Greek statuary, to accentuate her figure. Film cuts to Treloar posed on the bare stage without a pedestal. He wears brief leopard-skin trunks or short tunic, wrist bands, and Roman-looking laced sandals. His poses accentuate the muscular development of his upper body, particularly that of his arms, and include movements that make the muscles jump. Treloar finishes with a slight nod to the camera.
Buster Brown creater R.F. Outcault sketches his creation. Part of the Buster Brown series for Edison film studio.
A turbine is shown operating.
During a game of hide and seek, a new bride hides in a chest and remains undiscovered until a strange visitation thirty years later.
Billy Bitzer filmed 21 short actualities inside the Pittsburgh Westinghouse Works in April and May of 1904. Audiences of the day would have been treated to footage of factory panoramas, women winding armatures and turbines being assembled. These industrial films were produced for the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.
A “madman” escapes prison and the torments of his warders.
The adventures of an inattentive man who can't look away from his book.
Documentary on the process of hay-making, from the cutting of the grass to the stacking of the hay.
The Brahmin, Iftikar, who enjoys a great reputation in India, has determined to create something miraculous which will place the seal upon his renown. (giornatedelcinemamuto.it)
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?
A French aristocrat, who has recently arrived in America, has placed a personal advertisement in the newspaper...
Georges Melies the magician. Melies removes his own head, puts it in a glass box on a stool, then grows another one. Melies lights up a cigarette and blows smoke at his old head. The head gets payback by levitating above Melies and spewing water on him.