Georges Méliès

Une Nuit terrible, 1896, 1m08s
Star Film Catalogue No. 26

A bearded man in a nightdress and nightcap extinguishes his cigarette and bedside candle and lies back in bed. A gigantic beetle climbs up the bed, skitters across his prone body and heads up the wall, covered by a curtain. He leaps up as though electrified, grabs a broom, swats the insect onto the bed, and stamps on it. He then picks up its corpse and deposits it in the chamber pot that he keeps in the cupboard by the side of his bed. He then tries to get back to sleep, but finds it impossible.

Much more characteristic of Méliès than the relatively anonymous Playing Cards (Une Partie de cartes, 1896), A Terrible Night does at least feature a special effect, albeit one so primitive as to account for much of the film’s charm. The beetle, which is the size of a dinner plate, is clearly attached to a string, which someone is pulling from the other side of the curtain that covers most of the backdrop. Presumably the string was designed to be easily detachable via a well-aimed blow - you can see the man is aiming for a space just above its head, rather than the beetle itself.

His subsequent decision to dispose of the now-dead beetle in the chamber pot is a neat comic touch that inadvertently adds some historical interest: bearing in mind that Alfred Hitchcock scandalised audiences several decades later by showing a toilet being flushed, Méliès is completely laid-back about essential provisions in an era before such conveniences were universal. He also effectively conveys the paranoia that subsequently grips the would-be sleeper: though there is no sign of any other insect (and given the beetle’s size, one wouldn’t be hard to spot), he is clearly in for a disturbed night.

On a technical level, even aside from the hilariously unconvincing beetle, no attempt is made at realism: when the man blows out the candle, there is no corresponding change in the ambient lighting. As with Méliès’ other films from this period, it consists of a single shot from a fixed camera position, framing the entirety of the bed.

The untinted print on the Flicker Alley DVD is superior to that of Playing Cards, in that it lacks the latter’s frame jitter and is in startlingly good condition. Age-related surface damage is entirely excusable, and kept to a surprising minimum. Frederick Hodges’ piano accompaniment riffs on Schubert’s Allegretto moderato in D minor (from the Moments Musicaux cycle, D780) to good effect.

Links

• Internet Movie Database entry.
• Jshaide’s review (Rotten Tomatoes forum).