Le monstre

The Monster is an interesting hyper short silent film from 1903 (Which is now the earliest feature I've seen).

It tells the story of an Egyptian Prince who pays a dervish to resurrect a dead lover. As grisly as it may sound it's actually very comical and rather playful. We see our corpse in comedic skits, dancing and the whole thing is quite ahead of its time.

Certainly The Monster suffers with limitations based upon the time of release such as the lack of music and less than flawless video quality but it makes up for this by being highly quaint and surprisingly funny.

I'm not a lover of silent cinema, for me the silence is deafening but 3 minutes is manageable and it allowed me to appreciate that they did something quite impressive with such restrictions.

The Good:

Looks great for its time

Oddly funny

The Bad:

Usual set of restrictions

A couple of Egyptians stand in front of the Sphinx, probably at Giza. The one is missing his wife and prays to the gods to return her. He has her skeleton and, sure enough, through magic, she is returned. Her skeleton regains its body. But things don't always turn out the way we want, especially when the gods are involved. It has a dramatic conclusion.

Two minute show about a magician who takes a skeleton, and brings it to life. When he throws it at the poor girl who sits besides and watches in horror, the movie reaches its top. The sfx of this movie consists of very much noticeable clips, but it's really entertaining for those interested in the history of movies.

This little atmospheric short is about a couple of people in Egypt who are visited by a ghostly skeletal creature who rises out of a coffin that they have been transporting. Georges Méliès shows here once again that he was not only adept at visual trickery but was able to present it in an interesting way. The Egyptian setting is a nice touch and adds some exotic ambiance. The skeletal creature is manipulated in ways that are visually interesting. It dances around and is covered in sheets making it appear like a ghostly apparition. It rises high into the air and disappears into the ground. It even latterly turns into a woman. Of course, it's all very gimmicky but early films did not really tell stories at this point in history and Méliès did imbue his trick films with a definite charm. Le Monstre does sort of come off as a magician's show in many ways, but like a lot of his films it has been given a personality and the exotic flavour doesn't do it any harm at all.

This is one of the funniest early silent-era films I've seen. The story is simple: set against the backdrop of the Sphinx in Egypt (which looks strangely comedic itself in this film), a man wants to resurrect his dead wife. We see a wild metamorphosis from skeleton to beautiful woman and back again, right before our eyes. There were so many small moments that made me laugh-for example, how the skeleton started dancing, how the woman's body parts like her neck stretched unnaturally before settling into place, or how the man rejected his wife when she still looked half-mummified but got excited once she appeared as a healthy, beautiful human. And then there's the abrupt but extremely humorous ending. I watched the film accompanied by some lovely violin music from 1911, which was a perfect match-I think the choice of music really matters here.