A Terrible Night

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A Terrible Night
Scene from the common version of the film
Directed byGeorges Méliès
Produced byGeorges Méliès
Release date
  • 1896 (1896)
CountryFrance
LanguageSilent

A Terrible Night (French: Une nuit terrible) is an 1896 French silent comic trick film by Georges Méliès, who is also the actor in the film. It was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 26 in its catalogues,[1] where it is listed with the descriptive subtitle scène comique.[2]

Synopsis

A man tries to go to sleep, but is disturbed by a giant bug climbing up the bed and onto the wall. He attacks the bug with a broom and disposes of it in a chamber pot in a compartment of his bedside table.

Production

A Terrible Night may have been inspired by a series of comic magic lantern slides, published in the 1880s by the English firm of Bamforth & Co Ltd.[3] The film predates Méliès's famous use of cinematic special effects; the first known Méliès film with camera effects is The Vanishing Lady, made later in 1896. Rather, the giant bug is a simple pasteboard prop controlled with wire.[4]

The film was made with the Méliès-Reulos portable camera in the open air, in the garden of Méliès's home in Montreuil, using natural sunlight and a cloth backdrop.[4] Méliès himself played the man attempting to sleep.[2]

Survival

Frame from the film suspected to be the original A Terrible Night

A film commonly identified as A Terrible Night is known to survive

Cinémathèque Française and a flipbook published by Lèon Beaulieu around the turn of the century. If this hypothesis is accurate, both A Terrible Night and A Midnight Episode survive.[7]

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 0900406380
  2. ^
    ISBN 9782732437323
  3. ^ Pisano, Giusy; Renouard, Caroline (2014), "Méliès et la lanterne magique", in Malthête, Jacques; Gaudreault, André; Le Forestier, Laurent (eds.), Méliès, carrefour des attractions; suivi de Correspondances de Georges Méliès (1904-1937), Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, pp. 217–229 (here 218)
  4. ^
    ISBN 0816183686
  5. ISBN 1893967352
  6. ^ Méliès, Georges (2011), Georges Méliès (DVD; short film collection), Issy-les-Moulineaux: StudioCanal
  7. ^ Méliès, Pauline (2013), "A-t-on retrouvé 15 secondes d'un film de Georges Méliès?", Georges Méliès site officiel, retrieved 30 December 2013

External links

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