An old proprietor is startled and haunted by the strange happenings inside his curiosity shop.
The German legend of a scholar's unholy pact with the Devil would have been very familiar to most moviegoers (at least European ones), so Georges Méliès' early cinematic treatment likely got away with simply offering a fancifully illustrated late episode without the earlier narrative context (however, spoken narration provides some of the latter in this restored print). Tempted by Mephistopheles with all kinds of dancing and ethereal babes, Faust is at first excited and then terrified by the sight of various demons and monsters. The painted-set designers really went hog wild on this one, depicting the (sometimes sexy) torments of subterranean Hell with in bold terms (even when ballerinas prance in the foreground). (Dennis Harvey, Fandor)
A juggler enters upon the scene, picks up a skull, throws it into the air, catches it in his hands, where it is transformed into a handkerchief. The handkerchief, after being twirled about a wand, is changed to a napkin, and afterward to a tablecloth. Out of the table cloth comes a servant.
Four black minstrels turn into white clowns and back again when they hit or kick each other.
Pierrot goes to the house of his love to serenade her, but her father kicks him out. Soon the moon and its goddess Diana come towards the man and offers him something better.
A medieval magician performs a magic show involving a long ornate trunk in which he makes his assistants appear, disappear, and transform into other people.
The stages that a caterpillar goes through, from larvae to chrysalis, to become a butterfly.
"Rusalka" or "Mermaid" based on Pushkin, an opera by Dargomizhsky, and other sources: A prince and a miller's daughter have been involved in a romance together, but now the prince tells her that he must break it off. After the prince leaves, the distraught young woman attempts to drown herself. When the prince's wedding day arrives, he is tormented by her image, which appears wherever he goes. Eventually, he is compelled to return and to try to find out what happened to her, regardless of the consequences.
In a room where everything is safe and known, a man feels the pull of something vivid and uncertain just out of reach.
A modern reimagining of the trick film, combining the love of spectacle, the artist's process and the dark state of today's politics.
A woman on her way home notices a car following her.
GIRL and BOY meet little strangers
A boy puppet falls in love with a girl puppet. In a cruel twist of fate,they are separated when they are purchased by different people. When they chance upon each other again, the boy puppet does everything in his power to return to her side.
Various scenes from New Testament and Old: Christian martyrdom under Roman rule, Daniel in the lion's den, and Belshazzar's vision of a floating hand spelling the end of his rule.
This is another short, simple dance number. It’s quite stunning and unusual though with a bat turning into a woman who proceeds to give us a skirt dance before disappearing into thin air. The dance is mesmerising with the skirt stunningly changing colour throughout the film.
On a winter evening, a poor peasant woman waited for her husband, who had gone to gather firewood in the forest. He finally arrived. The man and woman returned to their gloomy home, devoid of the joyful cries of a child. This was their great sorrow and their greatest longing. A fairy, having heard their wishes, appeared to them in the guise of an old beggar woman and asked for alms. Having tested their kind hearts, she transformed the scene into a bright and sunny landscape. She summoned flowers, which gathered in her hand into a pretty bouquet. She offered it to them and then vanished. But, to their surprise, the flowers transformed into two beautiful children who brought joy and happiness with them. —Pathé catalogue supplement, August, 1906.
The tale of Mark Benway, a boxer who takes a punch that sends him into a world no man wants to go and one that he may never leave.
Teenage Babylon presents the aftermath of three teenage suicides through the medium of what purports to be 1960s vintage black and white police file footage. The film's haunting images, evoking teenage love gone wrong, are counterpointed by a series of saccharine torch songs, celebrating falling in love and the end of a masquerade. Through a kind of bathetic synthesis, the dialectic of Eros and Thanatos, love and death, is consummated in the 'morgue' of the forensic archive.
A film exploring the nature of sex and gender roles. Nymph, a fairy, walks and dances through a woodland before being pursued by Pan, an evil spirit.
Gugusse, a clown, is both astounded and bewildered upon seeing the mechanical movements of an automaton.
A man goes out on New Year's Day and is greeted by everyone with "Happy New Year", in the hope of getting a tip. The fellow is so annoyed that he runs into trouble with the law and almost loses his mind.
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