The Enchanted Drawing (1900)

The Enchanted Drawing is an early short released by the Edison Company. This is only 1 1/2 minutes long, and extremely simple. Basically, a guy draws a picture of a face, then a bottle of wine and a glass, which he "magically" takes off the paper and proceeds to drink. The guy on the drawing is NOT amused :-)

Very early example of stop-motion; quite cleverly done, and amusing, but it lacks most of the theatricality of the Melies works - It's a little too simple; just one set piece, one scene, and a couple of simple effects. Still, it's fun, and the attitude of the face in the drawing to having his things removed into the "real" world is entertaining.

Cendrillon (1899)

An early film by Georges Méliès, Cendrillon is the story of Cinderella, told in less than 6 minutes. As is typical of Méliès work, of course, it contains lots of trick photography - Much more so than was the norm at the time. Méliès was the first director (that I know of) to realise the potential of cinema as a medium for showing the impossible. He was certainly the first to really exploit that potential.


One of the more interesting aspects about this film is that it is episodic; there are four separate scenes, which was unheard of at the time - Apparently, no other film before this contained more than a single scene. We have Cinderella at home, where she is visited by the Fairy Godmother. She is then seen dancing at the prince's ball. She returns home, where she has a nightmare about running out of time. The final scene is the wedding procession.


The print I saw even had some hand-colouring, which was also quite interesting to see.


Thoroughly watchable, and, honestly, quite fun. Best film I've found from this far back (and I think I'm unlikely to look much further back).


Enjoy!