La maison ensorcelée

The scariest part was the characters' weird makeup.

The interesting thing about early movies is that they think in terms of space and physicality instead of time and spirituality. Since cinema is primarily an art of forms, this is the true, productive way to think. Concerning this specific piece, it quite entertaining and creative; the mirror scene, stop motion table scenes. Probably one of the first haunted house movies. Also, it's quite amazing to see "horror"as one of the first genres of this "modern" art form. Certainly inspiring.

Not super original, but makes up for it with quantity and variety, a tour de force of early film tricks.

Straight up, that face in the painting at the beginning is still pretty creepy. The ghost sweeping up the crumbs is cute, too.

Fun early horror.

Man, Segundo de Chomón's the best. The special effects here seem silly by today's standards, but I love to think about how audiences would have reacted to this in 1908. However, there is more emphasis on special effects than plot (which is a complaint I could make about many films from around this time), which makes this lose points.

As others have said, it's simplistic and doesn't have a lot of meat to the plot, but it's all about what they were able to accomplish back then. Even by today's standards, there's an otherworldliness to what you see here that's endearing.

All things we've seen before but all thrown together in a jumble and done at a fast pace.

There's not much to this beyond being a crazy effects piece; but in that regard, it's timeless in terms of how creative it is due to the lack of more advanced props or computer technology and is legitimately a lot more visually interesting compared to films with that sort of technology. Kind of makes me wish some indie film maker would make a full length film with these sort of effects, but I guess that would be easier said than done.

One of the better-known pictures from Chomon's days as Pathé's resident Méliès substitute. The tricks feel rougher than usual in their execution. Still, there's a full variety of them, and it's amusing enough. Stop motion was one of Chomon's strong suits, and those are the stand out sequences here.

Looking at it now, it looks more mysterious than modern movies with their computer effects considering the way it was made. Regarding scenography, the painting of the girl is the best.We can see here how heavy was the make up of actors back then. Of course, the quality of the image was bad, so emotions had to be clearly visible, but they didn't have to do the close-up while still looking this weird.As for the story, the beginning looks normal even for today's standards, but the ending's strange.

It's hard to watch these movies more than a century later; cinema has become an entirely different art form. It's too easy, alone in front of YouTube, to see this as merely a quick showreel of special effects rather than the communal spectacle it's intended as. (Google "The moment a dragon is slain".) All that said, Chomón has a fantastic sense of timing and pacing here

1.06 - El Laberinto del Fauno. De Chomon nearly as good as Melies but nobody knows his name.