Gustave est médium

Clerk Georges Biscot is caught asleep at his desk two hours after work is ended and is fired. Disconsolate, he goes to his aunt to give her the bad news. She is holding a seance, and the furniture starts dancing. Biscot is a medium. So he gets a job at a firm of movers, moving the furniture on their own power, and the van likewise.

This late, short comedy feature (only 34 minutes in length) was directed by Louis Feuillade, and looks to be very old-fashioned for 1921, with stop-motion effects providing amusement in the style of movies from the first decade of the century, like 1910's LE MOBILIER FIDELE. Yet by placing it in the context of a story, and with Biscot offering a bit of a trodden-down character -- he never takes off his sleeve protectors -- it takes these effects which were used by Melies as the point of the story into techniques to bring it to life.

The great idea not being waking up with telekinetic powers, but having someone wake up with telekinetic powers quickly realizing that a great career as a mover (and shaker) of furniture may lie ahead of him. The furniture animation is hilarious and quite good. This is something entirely different from feuillade´s more famous crime serials, and hopefully everyone in the world will someday be able to see this. In the meantime, let´s hope for more furniture animation in today´s cinema.