Le scarabée d'or

Weird, creative, and colorful, the visuals in "The Golden Beetle" are as spectacular as anything made in the early years of cinema. This had to have taken both a lot of skill and a lot of work to plan and execute. It uses several forms of trick photography, and also has lavish color produced by the old laborious process of hand-tinting each frame. The results are worth it, and it's still entertaining to watch over 90 years later. Much of the time, the succession of strange images is almost seamless, and there is not a dull moment. The actual story, though simple, is also rather amusing in itself.

One of those early silent shorts that gets in and gets out very quickly, in under 3 minutes, and involves a great amount of magic, and the composition is all in one long shot (which is part of the magic part since it involves dissolves and a lot of super-impositions and other early goodies of the cinematic trade). In this case some dude is skulking around, a beetle is crawling on the wall, and then the beetle turns into a woman! Holy Beatles, Batman! It's mostly about showing off color - yes, this is one of the early examples of using color in a silent film, albeit it's scattered - but most notably is the ending, which is actually rather messed up. I know that's not a very articulate way of describing it, but when you watch what happens with this Skulking Man who may or may not have somehow offended this Beetle Woman (who also returns with two, uh, female assistants), you'll likely do as I do and yell out "WHOA!" at what happens to this guy. Not a lot really *happens* in this short, but what does counts.

The Golden Beetle (1907)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

During the 1890s and the early part of the next decade, French master Georges Melies was the master at trick films. By the time THE GOLDEN BEETLE came along the French master was falling behind on the times and other filmmakers were taking over the genre that he helped build and this film is the perfect example of that. The story is pretty simple as a person is haunted by the title character.

What's so fascinating about this film is its colors. Hand tinting had been going on for quite a while but the job done here is rather amazing and it's really hard to believe that this picture was from 1907. In fact, you could easily pass this off as a real Technicolor film because the colors are just so gorgeous to look at. There's no question that it's the colors that leap off the screen but I also thought the special effects seen in the movie were quite good as well. The story itself is rather simple but it works good enough with everything else that is going on.

This is another trick photography in the style of Georges Melies - although this time made by Ferdinand Zecca for Pathe. Most imitations of Melies were blatant copies with little attempt at individuality on the part of those doing the copying, but Zecca was a talented filmmaker in his own right and this fantasy stands up to comparison with most of Melies' work.

The story, such as it is, is a little confusing, but it's not the story that's important - it's the special effects and the use of stencil-coloured film. the colour effects are quite spectacular and help to set this apart from more run of the mill efforts.

A stage magician dressed as an Arab comes onstage to perform a series of conjuring tricks, including making beautiful women in strange costumes and a fireworks display. The print, like many of the period, is elaborately tinted. Although the background is black-and-white, the performers' clothes are brightly colored, probably stencil-tinted.

It's one of the many magic act shorts that Segundo de Chomon directed, in imitation of the popular shorts of George's Melies. The effects are similar, and the costuming is much more elaborate. Pathe, the production company, was a bigger affair than Melies, having motion picture and sound recording divisions. This meant they could outspend Melies, and that eventually drove him out of the business. That would not happen, however, for a few years.