First, let's at least celebrate the surprises of Georges Méliès' first flop, including this Cassandran vision of Snorky from The Banana Splits. Best value though is probably given by the manic dragon marionette left over from Méliès' The Witch, four years earlier. At twelve minutes' running time, The Witch was considerably slower-moving than this, but only because something actually happened in it. There's nothing to wait for when you watch someone dream.
The sad truth is, despite its aesthetic, when it turned up on the Public Domain Review I didn't even recognise 1911's Baron Munchausen's Dream as Méliès' work. It has the feel of a contractual obligation: the spectacle's there but sloppily thrown on, and on and on, the interactions are uninspired – there's only so long one can watch someone pretend to be poked – and Méliès' trademark jump cuts don't seem to be even trying to match any more. Also, the man himself (pictured above), whose amoral charm, spry timing and alpha goatee would have made him the perfect Baron (pictured below, by Gustave Doré)...
... is nowhere to be seen. Instead we have a Baron far more ineffective, overweight, and cleanshaven. Actually we have two, which bring's me to the film's strangest omission: Munchausen's dreams are shown emerging from a giant mirror, but use of an actual mirror probably would have been prohibitively expensive, and definitely have reflected the camera and studio, so instead, Méliès constructs the room's reflection as a separate set, and casts a second actor as Munchausen's reflection to imitate the lead's movements exactly, which he does. Without deviation.
Throughout the entire film.
There is no Mirror Routine.
Georges Méliès – Georges Méliès! – built and populated a studio-sized mirror set in a film about a dream – BARON MUNCHAUSEN'S dream! – and then used it to... just pretend there was a mirror there. In fairness, it's the film's one genuinely effective effect, so maybe the Baron was cast because he was part of a double act, and this was their specialty. Anyway, here it is, but I won't judge you if you don't stick with it.
Do you know what I mean by the Mirror Routine? I've read that it was already a staple of the music hall when this film came out, but maybe they just meant this illusion, in which case Méliès would indeed have been – so far as I know – the first to film it. But an illusion's not a routine. What I'm thinking of involves the breaking or setting up of that illusion for comic effect, a little like what Charlie Chaplin would do five years later in The Floorwalker...
... only there's no fake mirror here, and it's being shot side on, so the illusion wouldn't work for the audience, even if there was.
In 1921, the French comedian Max Linder made 7 Years' Bad Luck, in which a hungover toff's staff try to cover up the breaking of his mirror during a canoodle, by electing someone to dress up as his reflection. This is generally considered to be the cinematic début of what I think of as the Mirror – or Missing Mirror – Routine, and it is excellent...
In 1924, Leo McCarey directed the even more excellent Sittin' Pretty with Charlie Chase – last seen on this blog man-spreading admirably in Tillie's Punctured Romance - in which, mistaken for a cop, Chase tries to capture a knife-wielding maniac by going undercover as his reflection. The stakes are higher than in 7 years' Bad Luck, but the rules of the game are the same. The routine starts seven minutes in. I'm posting the whole ten minutes though because, frankly, despite its title-heavy opening, I think this might be a perfect comedy. Maybe I should have just blogged about Sittin' Pretty...
Nine years later, in 1933, Leo McCarey found himself directing the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, which is both generally and fairly considered one of the greatest comedies ever filmed, and just stuck the mirror routine from Sittin' Pretty right in the middle, joke for joke. By this point though, the routine's own familiarity had become one of its ingredient, but this is the version people now know best. And of course it is excellent.
I would stop there, if I hadn't on my searches turned up this from Eric Sykes and Spike Milligan. You may have thought there was nothing to add after Duck Soup, but Spike manages it, with an arm through the door. Excellent.
Do you know any more? Do you know any earlier? Are they excellent? Let me know in the comments. (Oh, if you're reading this on your phone, there are loads of videos here. I've heard they don't always show on a phone.)
Things just seemed to be naturally heading towards a "Spot the Martian" round, I feel, so below are twenty images I found online of aliens from film and television. Can you identify the ten from Mars? For example: if I showed you the picture above, you would, of course, say "Yes, these are Martians! From the 1951 film Flight To Mars, set on Mars, which is why their helmets have holes at the front, because they live here so they can just breathe normally!" Bonus points if you can name the show or film the image is from, and additional bonus points if you just decide you deserve them, because why not? As many as you like! I'm WiIly Wonka. I'm the Childlike Empress. Infinite Wishes! Aswers will be posted as ever in the comments, where you can also tell me how many points you decided to award yourself.
Oops. As you may know now, Six Impossible Things aired, received sixty-six complaints, and is consequently unavailable to listen to on iplayer, so pftt.
(Is that an accurate use of the word "consequently"? Don't ask me.) But
it's Baftas tonight. "Mitchell and Webb Look" is up for a gong, and I am
very proud to be associated with everyone aboard. They're great. If you
do not believe me (of course you believe me) head over to their blogs
(do it anyway). I mean, Toby Davies has posted a whole tale on his! I
wish I'd been there when he read it out. Some friends of mine from the
London Dungeon held a similar evening a few months back though, which I could
make, and I took along a tale of my own that I hadn't looked at
in years, and I like it, and so in lieu of anything else, here's
mine:
May's Account of August
On the walls of the Goat’s Head Cafe are proudly displayed a large
number of red paper napkins. They sport a graceful yet bewildering
stream of numbers and symbols and tumbling stick figures, all that
remain of August the tailor’s evening visits. Those were happier days,
when the streets were free of old shoes and August could be found at a
table with a pot of tea and a pen from work, scribbling away on a
serviette. Scribbling what? August assured anyone who asked that he
was working on an equation which, when solved, would finally calculate
the Meaning Of It All. I never met him personally but his works are
still famous throughout the city, and it is generally held that, had he
not been taken from us so suddenly and tragically (in circumstances
which I shall shortly relate) he would have probably had the thing
finished within a week.
The Goat’s Head Cafe stocks no newspapers
for its clientele. Instead the proprietress encourages customers to take
a napkin from the counter and try to solve his equation for themselves.
He left us five years ago, and it is only my meeting with May in this
same cafeteria that leads me to speak of him now.
For you to
understand the circumstances of August’s disappearance you must first
know of the unique affliction that corrupted the city and still blights
it to this day. It is a cold place and peeling, with more than its fair
share of dirty birds and damp. But more puzzling and biblically
inconvenient than all these is the proliferation of old shoes.
They made their first appearance here when I was still a child. Stories
were heard of cracks appearing in the city from which articles of
discoloured footwear would suddenly belch forth in their tens and
hundreds. It wasn’t long before instances of this curious pollution
became commonplace. It was impossible to predict where or when they
would appear, but those who tried to make sense of such things
interpreted this as a moral judgment levelled by the city itself upon
certain of its inhabitants. Indeed it was not long before the common
wisdom pronounced that if an epidemic of old shoes was suddenly visited
upon one’s home, one must have done something to deserve it.
Then a lean, previously unremarkable tailor with a mathematical bent
came forward and let it be known that, following countless evenings of
hard scribbling and experiment, he had succeeded in developing a single
skein of thread strong enough to bind this city’s cracks for good. On
hearing this the citizens immediately divided themselves between those
who, meditating upon the unprecedentedly moral nature of this plague,
warned against the sinful implications in attempting any cure, and those
who thought that August’s claim was simply bobbins. But the single
thread worked, and it went on to make August’s name for him and a tidy
pile besides. He set up a very discreet practice on the twenty-third
floor of some wrought-iron Bread Street edifice and there awaited calls
from anyone who may have suddenly found themselves having to contend
with an old boot shooting into their guests’ soup, until the whole
problem seemed to be remedied. Outbreaks became increasingly rare and,
thanks to the nimble mind and fingers of August the tailor, quickly
brought under control.
“Nevertheless there is always more to be
done,” he would maintain, and took to spending his evenings at the
Goat’s Head Cafe calculating the Meaning Of It All.
This golden
age was not to last however, and five years ago to the day before my
first meeting with May an eruption of old shoes far greater than any we
had ever known tore the city almost to pieces, bursting from every solid
surface like the pale flesh from a crushed banana. Many people lost
loved ones in the deluge, but the most tragic loss to the city had to be
that of the one man who might have been able to do something about the
teetering, leathery heaps that litter the streets even as I speak,
August himself.
That is all we know of August the tailor... and
all I knew of him until, as I said, I was sitting in the Goat’s Head
recently and was approached by a very neat woman with grey skin and
short, shiny hair who said that her name was May, and that she used to
work the stage door of the Schmaltz Theatre on the corner of Bread and
Water, and that I had a kind face, and that there was something weighing
on her, and that if I bought her a bacon sandwich she would tell me
what had really happened to August five years ago to the day. I had
quite a bit of money on me so I bought her the sandwich, and as she
began to relate her story she took a clump of red paper napkins and
started to doodle.
“When I used to sit at the stage door,”
she said, “I could see him looking at me from his office on the
twenty-third floor. It was just across the street. I didn’t know who he
was at first, but he was clearly taken with me - I mean I was quite a
way away - and I loved the silly little silhouette of him staring down
at me. Eventually I decided to put on a ruff that was lying around or
some old werewolf costume, and I’d do a little dance back at him. So
finally one day he comes down from his office to the stage door and
makes himself known to me and I think, ‘Well! So this is August the
tailor!’...
“He asked me if I was free after work and I was so we
arranged to go out. That first night we just sat on our coats by the
canal feeding the dirty birds, but the next week I had a night off and
took him to see a show at the Schmaltz. August was absolutely captivated
by it, and came every night after that. He told me that what he had
loved most about it was not the story or the acting or even the
costumes, but the set. He said he’d never before seen anything in the
city that promised so much space. It was the forest where the werewolf
play takes place - just a series of flats with trees painted on them -
but August was convinced that there was more to it than that, and that
if he were allowed onto the stage and were to walk to the back the
forest would continue and broaden out on both sides to reveal a whole
other world composed of flats painted only on one side, and that if he
walked far enough into this forest he would eventually come out the
other side onto a wooden beach with a rolling, wooden sea of twisted
cylinders and such like. ‘That’s how I would escape,’ he said, without
any hint of a smile. Anyway we continued to see each other, but only as
friends because I knew how important his calculations were to him, and
because I didn’t think he fully understood my line of work. So when he
asked me out of the blue to be his wife one afternoon by the canal I
said sorry but no, even though he was very rich and famous, because I
wasn’t sure I’d be marrying him for the right reasons, and also because,
well to be honest, there was something about his work with shoes that
sickened me, although I shame myself now to say it. Anyway, we finished
feeding the dirty birds, and that was that...
“I saw nothing more
of him until a couple of months later. He came round to the stage door
and asked me if I was sure I didn’t want to go with him. I said well I
might but what was he talking about. He asked me if there was ‘anyone
else’ and I said that that wasn’t the point, and then I asked him how
his equation was getting on, and he said that he’d been having a bit of
bother with it. I said I was sorry to hear that. Then he reached both
hands into his pockets and with one hand he pulled out a lovely speckled
ring, and with the other he pulled out one end of a piece of thread,
and he put them both on my little shelf and said, ‘If it’s alright with
you, I’m going to take a look backstage.’
“I said, ‘Fine.’
“‘I’m going to leave these here with you, May,’ he said, ‘and while I’m
gone I want you to pick one of them - the ring or the thread. I’d
rather you picked the ring,’ and then he walked off into the theatre,
and I was a bit annoyed...
“So of course I picked the thread.
Well I wouldn’t have picked the ring anyway. But... well... it turned
out to be the thread holding the whole city together, didn’t it? It just
went on and on and I picked it and I picked it and the next thing I
knew the whole city had come undone, and there were old shoes all over
the place. And there were people dead. And it was all my fault. It was
just one thread.”
I paused...
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“No, I know. But I really miss him. And I mean I hate him as well. No
one should suddenly have that sort of responsibility dumped upon them.”
Maybe August had felt the same way. It didn’t sound like him though. As
she brushed the last crumbs from her cheek, I stared out of the
cafeteria window at this peeling city and the shoes in the street...
“What do you suppose happened to him?”
She didn’t have to give this any thought at all: “I like to think that he isn’t dead. He’s just gone backstage.”
I liked that. As she got up to leave May pushed her napkin my way.
“Here,” she said, “Have this. Thanks again for the bacon sandwich. I feel significantly better now.”
I looked down at what she had written on it.
There was a number.
I called it that evening but nobody answered.
(A typical night at the Schmaltz) *
Links:
Well, this was orginally posted on Myspace, which seems to be a bit jittery aboout linking to any of these addresses but Toby's tale can be found here, and it really is a beaut'!
See also the excellent blogs of John Finnemore and Jon Taylor... Good luck to us all.
The fortuitously relevant and uncontroversial illustration I found here.
*And I've no idea what this video was. Apologies. Probably some Melies. So here:
