Les lunatiques

Segundo de Chomón directed this strange film that is no doubt going to offend people today. It also shows how much the director 'borrowed' from his competitor, Georges Méliès--as most of the tricks were done the same way Méliès had been doing since the late 1890s.

The film begins on a set with a large stylized crescent moon and some stars. A woman appears and with the use of stop-motion, she pulls out a costume and shakes it and it becomes a Pierrot. Then, doing the same thing again and again, she now has five of them! Now, all five fall out of the sky (it's a nice special effect) and land. Here is where the movie loses steam. The characters start dancing back and forth and start changing into different characters--both male and female. In what I assume is supposed to be a funny ending, they ultimately all become black characters--which are literally actors in black-face. It wasn't very funny and is sure to offend a lot of folks today. All in all, a rather weak entry to the director.

Segundo de Chomon directs one of his Melies knock-offs here, using the higher production values afforded by Pathe's greater financial clout, as some players first rise to the stagy crescent moon, then fall to the earth, doing a chorus dance while they transform to different people, including chorines in blackface.

It's amusing, but the time for this sort of pure trick film was passing along with its stage grammar. Cuts and crane shots were already part of the standard film grammar, but not for this sort of film..... perhaps the reason why straightforward non-fantastic camera-work remained still and fairly stage-center for the next hundred years: it seems somehow much more real to the film-goer.

So, the lady on the Moon creates a couple of clowns in pajamas. Strong start, strong start indeed. But where are we going from here? Well, mostly down, and fast. Not only because the "lunatiques" fell down from the Moon, the quality drops with them too, significantly. Yeah, we get some dancing, a couple of transformation, blackface, more dancing, but nothing of substance. I'm a well known supporter of dancing (don't question it, please!), but sometimes, you know... it's just not enough to make an impact.

This kind of film was starting to wear a little thin for audiences in 1908. The first narrative film was already five years old, and moviegoers were growing accustomed to seeing something a little more advanced than the same trick photography that the likes of Segundo de Chomon (here) and Georges Melies had been producing for a decade by the time this one was made.

A woman on a crescent moon creates five clowns from sheets. They spill down to the moon in what is probably the most impressive section of the film then perform a little dance before repeatedly tapping each other on the head or kicking each other up the bum to change into another character. A mild diversion, but nothing more.

This film by Segundo de Chomon has a highly noticeable resemblance of a film by the french filmmaker Georges Melies. The film I am referring to is the 1901 short feature "Off to Bloomingdale Asylum" in which 4 black minstrels jump of a carriage, slap and kick each other, and turn into clowns. While this film is certainly not a true remake of "Off to Bloomingdale Asylum", it does indeed make use of the idea of people kicking and slapping people and magically transforming into other people. However, the story here is different, so this is certainly not a rip-off.

On the moon, a lady shakes out several clown suites, upon which clowns appear in them, then sit on the moon. After the woman has produced 5 clowns, they fall off the moon and once on the earth the clowns start to transform into different people, such as Chinese men, and black women ("ahh! Chomon was racist!" you scream). The copy that survives is colored with blues and pinks.

Another resemblance to Melies is that the clowns shown here are supposed to look like separate versions of Pierrot, a character Melies sometimes put in his films. Whatever effects were borrowed from Melies, this one is still a nice and somewhat good trick film from Chomon which at least has a bit more of a plot than what you see in your standard Melies film.