Quo Vadis?

A trick film using the reverse effect.

Ferdinand Zecca's remake of his own film "Plongeur fantastique" (The Fantastic Plunger, 1901) with the same premise, showing a diver with reverse motion editing for a curious effect

Apparently inspired by the antics of Harry Houdini, Slippery Jim opens in the office of a police commissioner to whom a rather cocky villain is presented. The commissioner orders the prisoner to be clapped in irons, but this proves to be easier said than done because our anti-hero - presumably the Slippery Jim of the title - proves to be an expert escapologist.

This is a compact telling of the Cinderella fairy tale and the film is elaborately staged.

A man in a suit and cap stops in front of the display of a bookseller, finds and flips… "Invisible Man" by H. G. Wells! Fascinated by the subject, he buys the book and goes home with the intention to test the invisibility formula described by the author…

An early hand-tinted adaptation of Ali Baba.

A policeman spots a dog stealing a piece of meat from a butcher's shop, and gives chase. Soon several more policemen have joined the pursuit. But the chase does not turn out as the policemen expect.

It is the depths of winter, and the snow is falling. The desolate landscape casts a melancholic note over the scene. A poor peasant woman awaits her husband, who has gone to gather firewood in the forest. When he finally arrives, they lament their sad fate. If only they had a child! This wish has been granted by the Spring Fairy, who appears before them. With a wave of her magic wand, she transforms the scene into a cheerful, flowery landscape. They themselves are dressed in rich costumes. The fairy summons flowers, which flow into her hand to form a magnificent bouquet, instantly transformed into a beautiful pink baby, which she gives to them. Then she vanishes, leaving them overflowing with joy and longing. This film, tinted in Barcelona by Segundo de Chomón, is currently lost and should not be confused with the remake done by Vincent Lorant-Heilbronn in 1905, also tinted by Chomón in Paris, which is widely available to watch.

During a strike, several workers are killed in a confrontation. The wife of one of them kills the factory owner. At her trial, the owner's son asks for mercy, knowing that his father was wrong. Because of that the wife is freed.

In turn, the statues come to life, dancers like dolls, perform on a table, the women metamorphose from butterflies, and babies are born from giant flowers. These scenes are a series of tableaux which are beautifully incoherent, changing and diverse as in real life, where it is necessary to have a certain belief in metaphysics for the soul to be transported into a perpetual motion, migrating from one another and into the stars.

Georges Méliès's first attempt at Cinderella was in 1899. That film was extraordinary then for having multiple scenes and a semblance of a narrative; additionally, the use of dissolves as transitions in it influenced other filmmakers for years to do the same. Méliès was the cinema world's preeminent leader then. By 1912, however, that was no longer the case; frankly, as evidenced by this feature, his style had become dated. Moreover, Méliès had begun to adopt techniques from other filmmakers, such as direct cuts instead of dissolves, and there's even a match on action shot during the slipper trying-on scene.

A convicted criminal dreams about his past the night before his execution.

Some naughty scenes from a balcony.

A servant kills his miser master and buries his corpse. The murderer is haunted by the ghost of his victim....or is it his own conscience?

Segundo de Chomón's remake of Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon.