Le squelette joyeux

While this film is fascinating and delightful, it is absolutely not stop motion animation. It is a film of a "break apart" skeleton marionette, nothing more. I have a skeleton marionette made by the Pelham Puppets company that does all these tricks. Clearly the design for the marionette was around at the turn of the century, and Pelham mass-marketed it. I'm astonished that this film is widely regarded as "one of the first stop motion films", when it is nothing of the kind. That's all I have to say, but unfortunately the IMDb is insisting that my review isn't long enough, so I'm writing more words. The film itself is only 45 seconds long! How many words can one write about a 45 second film?

Among the simplest yet best movies ever, comedy and horror join in this flawless short. watch it now it won't cost you a minute nor a penny,since it's in the public domain. thank you ,lumiere brothers, thank you

What were supposed to, or else! A woman sits by a swamp thinking about what had happened before. She saw a mini purple object with a soul on a treadmill staring at a pucture of the crossed out sun. She had been entranced, and took a nap right there. The sun rose and kind of bleached here mind so she built a room full of warm water (with 0 entrance) out of play dough and set it next to the purple object. The purple object slowly turned its attention to the room, and basically ended up not looking away from it while moving on its machine. And..the woman stared at that with a blank face.

I found this film on YouTube when I was watching some Georges Méliès films. I can only assume someone looked at the style and assumed it was one of his pictures...which isn't at all surprising. What IS surprising is that it was made by one of the Lumière brothers...who were known for much more mundane sorts of pictures than "The Merry Skeleton".

In "The Merry Skeleton" an obviously fake skeleton dances about on a string. However, by stopping and restarting the camera, you see parts of the skeleton fall off and magically reattach themselves. A cute trick for its day...and mildly enjoyable today.

'The Merry Skeleton (1898)' depicts a happy skeleton busting some moves on the dance floor, unfazed whenever a bone falls out of place. The piece is pretty enjoyable for what it is, a silly little sideshow featuring a skeleton on a string and some camera tricks to make it seem as though it's putting itself back together after it falls apart. There isn't much to it, but it's pleasant enough and carries a lot of historical weight. I can imagine this delighting quite a few people, especially children, back in its day. 6/10.