This elaborately colored one-reeler is available, as I write this, for viewing on Youtube. It shows Segundo de Chomon adapting to the changes in film story telling -- a lot better than his producers, who put a few too many titles in, disrupting the flow of imagination as Juanita daydreams of the increasingly elaborate revenge that a gypsy girl will bring down on her boyfriend because she has not let him give her alms.
This piece is told in multiple scenes, in an increasingly artificial world. The venue shifts from a realistic courtyard to a wild, stagebound prison in which various stage monsters appear. In some ways this hearkens backwards to half a dozen years earlier -- a couple of lifetimes in the evolution of cinema at his point! -- when de Chomon was Pathe's lead director in driving Georges Melies out of business. I am impressed by his attempts to combine the old and new film grammars: the naturalistic new grammar and the surrealistic old grammar in the depths of daydream. But the effect is disrupted by the occasional titles, informing us, for example that "the nightmare continues." Ignore them if you can.
This piece is told in multiple scenes, in an increasingly artificial world. The venue shifts from a realistic courtyard to a wild, stagebound prison in which various stage monsters appear. In some ways this hearkens backwards to half a dozen years earlier -- a couple of lifetimes in the evolution of cinema at his point! -- when de Chomon was Pathe's lead director in driving Georges Melies out of business. I am impressed by his attempts to combine the old and new film grammars: the naturalistic new grammar and the surrealistic old grammar in the depths of daydream. But the effect is disrupted by the occasional titles, informing us, for example that "the nightmare continues." Ignore them if you can.