A Diversão de Satã

Here's Segundo de Chomon challenging Melies as the master of the trick film, using the sort of magician's act that Melies did. It's a combination of stage magic and movie magic -- if you look carefully, you can see the moments when the camera stops and something is substituted.

Because whenever Melies got before the cameras and did his act -- he was a stage magician and had gotten into making movies to fill up the show at his Theatre Robert-Houdin -- you could see his pleasure in performing, there was no way that de Chomon could match that. So he stuck his unnamed performing in a skeleton costume with horns and a cape. It's so over-the-top that it's magnificent.

The Red Spectre is a trick film from France in the style of Georges Méliès; although this one was directed by Ferdinand Zecca. It has all of the visual invention you would expect and it also has a nice red coloured tint which is perfect for its atmosphere.

It's set in an underground cavern and features a demon warlock. This evil character possesses souls of several women. He manipulates them in several ways and generates television-like screens. All the while he is counterbalanced by a female nemesis that thwarts his evil actions and ultimately destroys him.

It may be a short film but it's full to the brim with visual ideas. Characters appear and disappear, are shrunken and burst into flames. Walls are constructed and turn into giant monitors and rock faces move aside to show a cavern full of hell-like fires. It's relentlessly inventive basically. Worth seeing if you like the visual innovation of the earliest days of cinema.

In 1907, we all agree, cinema audiences could be easily amused, so to say. But even today, to look at the pioneering cinema ways used to trick the human mind is somewhat fascinating. I, myself, get more of a kick from watching these old fashioned movie magicians than in a live magic show where everything is overdone. Here, the camera is still, Satan is a guy in a Halloween costume - but see how the frame is used to its fullest, the sets are so creepy and the eerie atmosphere kicks off right away, when we see a twirling coffin magically appear, and the magic show begins.

A treat for all fans of novelty early cinema.

The Red Spectre (1907)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining French film from director Ferdinand Zecca was clearly influenced by the work of Georges Melies. In this film, in what appears to be Hell or something like it, a skeleton brings to life a couple women and then begins to do various tricks with them. That's pretty much everything you need to know in regards to the story as everything else is just one trick after another. There are a few good things about this film but at the same time it's just so easy to see that it's no where near the league of Melies and you have to feel that the French master was doing this type of film a decade earlier and doing it much better. I think the biggest problem is that there's really no strong pacing and after a while the 9-minute running time just feels like it's dragging along. There are several of the tricks, which simply aren't that entertaining and for one good example just check out the one where the skeleton wraps a woman up in some sort of tarp. How the trick was done is easy to spot. There are some good things however and this includes the scenery, which is quite nice to look at. The biggest highlight has to be the very good tinting and especially the reds.

Director Segundo de Chomon's THE RED SPECTRE is a wonderful, subterranean magic show, put on by the skeletal entity of the title. It features various female subjects in various tricks and fantastical situations.

Mr. De Chomon once again shows his sense of humor, along with his love of the supernatural. The special effects are, as always, some of the best of the era. Of special interest are the women in the bottles, the flip-screen images, and the reverse-action wall-building sequences.

Horror fans should find this short film fascinating, since it is one of the vintage examples of what was yet to come...