I Watch A Pair Of REALLY Old Shorts

They are from Europe in 1907, as a matter of fact. The first is The Policemen's Little Run and the second is The Red Spectre: 

Once again it was a time and motivation thing where I did not feel like watching something feature length. Instead I saw two 1907 shorts from French director Ferdinand Zecca...this one is a 5 ½ minute bit where a dog steals a leg of lamb from a butcher's shop and what seems like the entire city's police force is after the pooch. Basically Little Run is seeing a bunch of dudes run funny; apparently something like this is common for shorts of this age, made in the infancy of this medium.

At least this got some chuckles, the biggest being the crude yet satisfactory effect used to simulate the dog and coppers going up/down the side of a building. The way the United States has descended into utter chaos the past several days, a few amusing moments was enough to brighten my spirits a little... even if this had a plot involving law enforcement. Those not in the United States... I won't even touch the topics that have inflamed so many into a white-hot intensity... just note that it is THE topic everyone is discussing now due to all the havoc that has occurred and the outrage over several controversial deaths that have happened throughout 2020.

This is the second of two 1907 shorts from France. Unlike the other one, this was co-directed by French director Ferdinand Zecca and Spanish director Segundo de Chomon. A mutual found a version of this on YouTube that had rather vivid color and a surf soundtrack from modern band The Ubangis.

This has a plot of sorts... a demon in some sort of grotto who wears a skeleton outfit (I'll just refer to him as La Parka) does various magic tricks, brought to life via various camera tricks that still look fine over a century later. The illusions also have the effect of capturing various women; however, one always eludes his grasp no matter what La Parka does.

Tonight, I discovered that there have been natural comparisons made between de Chomon & Georges Melies... there is a road not to go down with me as I have barely scratched either of their filmographies and I know from some reading that both are incredibly influential. The Red Spectre made for an entertaining 9 minutes.