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Silent Fantasy
see all genres ›Trick photography, fantastical design elements and fanciful themes were naturals for silent cinema, from Melies' magical miniatures to the mammoth mythological depictions of Fritz Lang's Valhalla hijinks.
Discover Silent Fantasy Films
Genres / Silent / Silent Fantasy
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Aladin, or the Wonderful Lamp
An extravaganza of early special effects, the Pathé ALADIN (lacking the more common double "d") delights in the story’s magical transformations. Trick shots and striking color tinting accent the elastic reality that comes with the wonderful lamp. The fantasia only lasts a single reel but that's time enough...Start your free trial to watch
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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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The Avenging Conscience
D.W. Griffith indulged his lifelong fascination with Edgar Allan Poe in this ambitious amalgam of the writer’s poetry and prose: “Annabel Lee” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” flavored with shades of “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Conqueror Worm." Poe’s tales are interwoven in one...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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The Cameraman's Revenge
After filming several live-action documentaries for the Natural History Museum in Kono, Lithuania, Ladislas Starewicz started a film about fighting stag beetles but was frustrated when the insects refused to perform under lights. Starewicz decided to recreate the fight by articulating dead beetles in...Start your free trial to watch
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Cinderella
French film pioneer Georges Méliès found the tale of Cinderella irresistible, producing a five-minute, full-color version in 1899 and this twenty four-minute version in 1912. Abandoning his earlier approach of hand-tinting each figure in favor of full-frame color tinting, he lavishes his attention on elaborate invention,...Start your free trial to watch
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Cinderella
An elaborately produced version of the well known fairy tale interrupted by just a few summarizing intertitles, with Florence LaBadie and Harry Benham. Although in-camera trick photography is important for the story, it is rather conventional, having been introduced over ten years earlier by French filmmaker Georges Méliès....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 Dream of a Rarebit Fiend
A stunning visual fantasy adapted from the comics of Winsor McCay, which had appeared in the New York Telegram since 1904. Edwin S. Porter not only borrowed McCay's title but his dream-based narrative structure. Likewise, McCay's surreal imagery is convincingly realized on the screen using a variety of...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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The Golden Beetle
As a sorcerer captures a beetle and casts it into his cauldron, it transforms into a glorious woman wearing golden beetle wings and soon turns the tables by casting her own delightful spells. Filled with poetic trick cinematography and optical effects, Segundo de Chomon's THE GOLDEN BEETLE is a beautiful...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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In the Bogie Man's Cave
The Bogie Man’s cave is one of the many triumphs of set design for Georges Méliès. More unusual for the pioneering French director is the grisly turn when the monster chops up his servant for a steaming pot of stew. But the Bogie Man’s guilty conscience weighs on him, plaguing his sleep with even more...Start your free trial to watch