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Trick
see all genres ›Realizing that simply showing life projected on a sheet would lose its novelty eventually, filmmakers soon searched for things their new medium could call uniquely its own. Trick photography, with its ability to create illusions fantastical or fearsome, was one realm which it could easily outrun the legitimate stage.
Discover Trick Films
Genres / Short / Trick
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The Automatic Moving Company
Historian Donald Crafton credits this 1911 Pathé Frères film THE AUTOMATIC MOVING COMPANY to Romeo Bosetti; it too is an imitation of an earlier work, Emile Cohl's MOBILIER FIDELE, made in 1910 for Pathe's rival, Gaumont. However, Cohl also worked for Pathe in 1911 and the two artists sometimes...Start your free trial to watch
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Baron Münchausen’s Dream
The legendary Baron Münchausen (an actual German aristocrat well-known for his exaggerated stories) has been portrayed many times in dozens of films over the years. In this telling by the equally remarkable Georges Méliès, Münchausen has spent an evening dining with his friends. He retires for the night...Start your free trial to watch
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Delirium in a Studio
Only a small portion of this film survives but the extant fragment proves a strong dose of Georges Méliès-style imaginative slapstick. We enter mid-hallucination, as a painter's assistant chases a live concubine back into her portrait. When the artist wakes up and sees his hired hand bashing the canvas, he...Start your free trial to watch
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Disappearing Act
DISAPPEARING ACT represents, as you might suspect, a magic act. Not any ordinary act, however. More of a "metamorphosis" in the hands of director Alice Guy. In the parlance of the era, the short is an example of a "trick" film (in that the magic performance is a result of camera trickery and not by any...Start your free trial to watch
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The Eclipse
Subtitled "The Courtship of the Sun and Moon," Georges Méliès' buoyant interpretation of the scientific method can be seen as a sister film to his more famous A TRIP TO THE MOON. A fabulously attired professor instructs his pupils on the principles of a lunar eclipse but the professor can hardly believe his eyes when he sees...Start your free trial to watch
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Excelsior! Prince of Magicians
French stage magician and illusionist Georges Méliès began filmmaking in 1896. He worked in many genres but is especially remembered for short trick films such as this one from 1901, EXCELSIOR! PRINCE OF MAGICIANS. Melies wrote, designed and directed his films and often (as here) performed the principal...Start your free trial to watch
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An Excursion to the Moon
Georges Méliès' best known film, A TRIP TO THE MOON, is inspired by Jules Verne's "From Earth to the Moon" and H.G. Wells' "First Men on the Moon." In 1908, Segundo de Chomón was originally hired to prepare Spanish titles for the Pathé films sold in Spain. Proving adept at every possible camera trick, he...Start your free trial to watch
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Explosion of a Motor Car
It has been claimed that early automobiles were not particularly safe. British director Cecil Hepworth takes such notions to the inevitable extreme. In this case, the explosion is only the beginning. Tragedy follows (with a dose of black humor). This particular version, oddly cropped to lop off to full...Start your free trial to watch
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The Good Sheperdess and the Evil Princess
The Cinderella story gets a fresh spin in this enchanting fantasy from pioneering French director Georges Méliès. A nimble fairy whisks the kind shepherdess (spelled "sheperdess" in the English title) into a charmed realm of beauty and dance, while the noisome princess is brought down a few pegs in life,...Start your free trial to watch
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The Haunted Castle
THE HAUNTED CASTLE is a literal translation from the French title, LE CHATEAU HANTÉ. The fact that an 1896 Méliès film is also often known as THE HAUNTED CASTLE (though its French title, LE MANOIR DU DIABLE, could more properly be translated as THE DEVIL'S MANOR) has caused confusion to catalogers....Start your free trial to watch
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The Haunted Castle
I've yet to see anything to disprove the claims that this spooky affair is the first supernatural horror film of all time. Some also call it the first vampire film, most likely because of the presence of a large flying bat-creature early on. For Méliès devotees, it holds another more important position...Start your free trial to watch
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In the Barber Shop
Blackface proves less than permanent in this slapstick confection by French pioneer Georges Méliès. The fanciful vision of a barber shop run amok anticipates later comedies of faulty machinery in Charles Chaplin's MODERN TIMES and Jacques Tati's PLAYTIME. - Max GoldbergStart your free trial to watch
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The Knight of the Snows
Georges Méliès avails himself of fabulous painted sets, lavish costumes, acrobatics and editing tricks to satisfyingly transpose the imaginative domain of the fairy tale into cinema. The plot turns on a spurned suitor who sells his soul to the devil to capture his beloved princess. Enter the shining knight...Start your free trial to watch
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The Last Trick
Jan Svankmajer’s debut film extends the madcap spirit of his Prague-based Theatre of Masks. Two magicians perform an escalating series of tricks, most of which involve strange objects entering or exiting their plaster heads. Once pried open, they resemble surrealist cabinets stuffed with grinding gears, violins and insects....Start your free trial to watch
