Romeo Bosetti

In an effort to secure a promised inheritance, Onésime invents a time machine that speeds up activity on earth, hyper-animates men and machines, and telescopes the human life-cycle.

In a last gasp effort to school Titine in domestic labor, her parents entrust her with housesitting. She executes her obligations with catastrophic aplomb, shattering all the dishes in the gesture of cleaning them. She manages to flood and incinerate her entire home simultaneously. In a futile effort to find her baby brother and pet dog, she inherits a horde of stray canines and orphaned babies.

Yet again, Léontine ignores the well-meaning advice of her mother. She attempts to hang her downstairs neighbor (played by a man in drag) with a rope, which she then uses to attach a bookseller’s kiosk to a moving vehicle. A vengeful mob and the police gather, as they do, but she entraps them on a scaffolding by removing the rope ladder.

Léontine helps her pal Rosalie (Sarah Duhamel) race against time to clean up a house after Rosalie’s boss, Baron von Hummen, announces that he and Madame will return home earlier than planned. They recruit workers and poach resources from a nearby construction site. As we see, it takes a village to tidy a house on short notice (or at least it should!), but there’s a limit to the capacities of even collective domestic labor. Accelerated productivity gives way to sheer physical anarchy and irreversible destruction. Dirt and debris pervade every surface—furniture and skin alike—leading to several unfortunate blackening gags.

Rosalie and Léontine go to the theater and are swept away by big emotions.

A French silent film serial which follows the exploits of the archvillain Fantômas, who commits crimes while eluding Inspector Juve's tireless persecution.

When Patouillard meets another woman at a street cafe, his jealous wife dresses up as a man in a suit and beard to spy on him.

Rosalie moves into an apartment building, disturbing her neighbors above, below, and next to her.

What would a vacation be for Titine without hellraising mischief? As a reward for receiving high marks at school, she goes on a peaceful jaunt to the countryside to visit her aunt and uncle. Naturally, she trips the gardener, futzes with her aunt’s expensive perfume, terrifies the cooks by levitating pots and pans (with hidden string!), enjoys a bacchanalian feast of grapes and sausage, and then jumps out the window. Her uncle banishes her with a stern warning for tyrannizing their idyllic home. But Léontine does not appear chastised.

Pétronille's husband jockey, Tortillard, face-plants in the middle of the track. She puts on his clothes and mounts his steed, “despite her rotund build” at 100 kilos. She leads the other riders on an off-track equestrian escapade, eventually making it back to the course.

In a playful, reflexive take on the familiar “last-minute rescue” formula, a woman and her housekeeper left alone at home miss-read shadows projected from the street outside and fear a violent assault. Male police officers dispatched to rescue them correctly diagnose the situation, with hilarious results, including a late gender reveal. Notable for its early use of triptych.

A jolly housekeeper brings new meaning to the notion of “home entertainment” with a handsome new portable phonograph that causes people, furniture, and buildings to rock and roll through the magic of stop-motion animation. (MoMA)

Anarchic physical destruction

Funnicus has made a futile endeavor all day to be cheerful, but conditions will not permit. Seeking forgetfulness, he took his despondent way towards Luna Park, and started to "do" the place thoroughly. An overplump dame was giving tense ear to the whispered warnings of a Gypsy sooth-sayer. An opportunity. Funnicus crossed the swarthy female's palm with much silver, and promptly slipped into her wrappings and place. The overplump dame was then regaled with a series of disclosures concerning her future affairs of the heart which brought Funnicus an unexpected clump on the ear. Funnicus, to mete out counterpunishment to the saucy lady, proceeded to chase her over the zig-gag stairways, windy passages, electric railways, sea wave track, automobile armchairs, etc. At last, to escape retaliation, he borrowed an attendant's costume and the Tzigane bandmaster's baton, one, two, three. The syncopated sounds begin their infectious course and everybody finds himself tripping the light fantastic.

The wife of Patouillard begs him for new clothes according to the latest fashion in the newspapers. So they go out for some shopping. Afterwards she is going out in her new dress, which is so tight that she can hardly walk in it. She changes the skirt for a pair of trousers, but finds herself being laughed at, and when the trousers get wet at the seaside, Patouillard finally puts her in a jute bag and makes her hop back home.

Rosalie is a maid for a wealthy family and receives a letter that her cousin is coming to visit. She assumes that a burglar is her cousin and the mix-up and chaos begins.

Pétronille tries and fails to commit suicide, multiple ways, after her boyfriend Casimir dumps her. A morbid but amusing comedy.

A pumpkin vendor returns with her loaded car. Two pranksters overturn the car, and what follows is a truly hilarious and eventful pumpkin hunt. (Nouveautés Cinématographiques, February 3, 1908)

Léontine goes on a dish-breaking rampage to protest her parents’ boring rules, so they kick her to the curb. She proceeds to terrorize the neighbors, tripping two men hauling large cartons by ensnaring them with pieces of string. She drops a pumpkin on a shopkeeper’s head, ties someone’s furniture to a moving vehicle, and then explodes fireworks inside a plumber’s protruding drainpipe. He puts out the flames in a tailspin by jumping into the river.

Wimpy Little Moritz needs to toughen up to win Rosalie, but ends up smashing everyone and everything in sight when boxing lessons turn him into a mindless fighting machine. (MoMA)

An alcoholic is inadvertently sewn into a mattress.

Léontine cannot resist her desire to sail her new toy boat indoors. She plugs up the drains and turns on the faucets, flooding the house as water rains down through the floorboards and collapses the ceilings.

Auguste is cured! The doctor at the asylum said so. Delighted, his mother gives him a few coins so he can go out for a little entertainment. Auguste settles in a cinema to admire the great Max Linder. Enthused by the film, he goes off with the movie poster to make himself a suit like the star's. With a false visiting card, he goes to an agent, who sends him to the Comica film company. But the charming man is going to make a terrible mistake on his way… This comedy brings together two French silent film stars: Max Linder and Romeo Bosetti.

A French silent film serial which follows the exploits of the archvillain Fantômas, who commits crimes while eluding Inspector Juve’s tireless persecution.