Les incendiaires

"Les Incendiares" is a most atypical film for French filmmaker Georges Méliès. Normally, his films are comedies or fantasies....but this one is a gruesome murder flick!! And, some of its savagery is still a bit shocking when seen today.

The story begins with a gang robbing a farmer and setting his home ablaze--killing the family. Soon the police give chase and there's a dramatic shootout at the crooks' hideout. This part shocked me, as during the melee, you see a guy attack a policeman and the cop grabs an axe and plunges it into the guy's head!!! It's shocking stuff...and pretty gruesome. Soon after, the captured bandits are about to be guillotined for their crimes! Surely this is neither a comedy nor a film to show the kiddies...unless, of course, you want to raise really screwed up children!

This true crime sort of story is more unlike the typical Georges Méliès film than any I can recall having seen. No only does it feature the axe portion but the guillotining looks pretty realistic and is shown very vividly...including the head flying off and one of the executioners wiping off the blood at the very end!!! A very sick but slickly made film that is sure to appeal to the worst in us...I know I thought it was pretty cool!

Desperate Crime, A (1906)

Fragment

aka Les Incendiaires

This Georges Melies film isn't complete but seven-minutes worth of it are included on the Flicker Alley set and it's a real shame that the entire thing hasn't been found. The film was apparently one of his longer ones as it features narration and the footage starts off as a thief is burning down a market that he has just robbed. Later footage has him being captured and then we see him locked up in prison. Some great footage also includes him dreaming about the guillotine and the real highlight is when his body is put on there and his head cut off. I was extremely shocked to see how terrific the effect was when it came time for the head to be cut off. I paid close attention to see the "edit" but it went past me twice. This entire sequence is wonderfully done and I can't even begin to imagine how people in 1906 must have felt seeing this. The effect is beautifully done and the follow-up is extremely well done too. Hopefully the entire film of this will eventually show up.

An amazing look into early film making by the French pioneer Georges Méliès, a man who was way before his time (see Voyage dans la lune, Le (1902) )

A man is murdered and the killer bought to justice by the guillotine. What really struck me as amazing about this film was the depth of imagination with the storytelling, especially a dream sequence where the man waiting for his ultimate faith has visions... I was wanting to find out what the real significance of this was if anyone could please enlighten us that would be great! There are no title cards for this silent film.

I recommend this to anyone with a fascination for the history of film making.

This is an unusual film from Georges Méliès, the early cinema pioneer known for his wacky trick films and fantastical féeries (fairy films). "A Desperate Crime" is a dramatic picture, which from the narration provided by Flicker Alley, claims to be based on a true story, but which Richard Abel ("The Ciné Goes to Town") says was an imitation of such films by the Pathé studio. One that readily came to my mind was one of the earliest Pathé story films, "Histoire d'un crime" (1901), which also features a prisoner's dream as a superimposed scene-within-a-scene and leads up to the execution by guillotine of that criminal.

In earlier years, it was other filmmakers who were imitating the films by Méliès, so it says something about the decline of his career, that it was now Méliès who was making some films that were highly imitative of those by his competitors. Nevertheless, this had the benefit of Méliès taking his camera outside for a chase sequence and using direct cuts as transitions instead of his usual dissolves. There are also two stop-substitution splices (Méliès's favorite special effect) used for the goriest moments: where a bandit gets an axe in the head and where the prisoner's head is chopped off by the guillotine.