The Bachelor’s Paradise
Chez la sorcière, 1901, 1m51s
Star Film Catalogue Nos. 350-351
A bachelor visits a witch and asks her to find him a wife. She asks him for money, and he tosses her a small purse. She concocts a potion in her cauldron and sets fire to it. Once the flames die down, a beautiful woman emerges. The witch multiplies her into five women and asks the bachelor to choose. After carefully examining them, he picks the second and asks her to sit down on a stool. The witch then folds the other four women back into one, and makes her disappear in a puff of smoke. The bachelor begins to woo his chosen companion, but as he gets particularly ardent, she changes into the witch, who cackles with glee at the trick she has played on him. When the enraged bachelor tries to attack her, she transforms him into a donkey and mounts him, riding him around the cauldron to the accompaniment of regular beatings from her riding crop.
This comic cautionary tale (whose French title is the more prosaic “At the Witch’s Home”) highlights the potential drawback of choosing a mate by supernatural means. For much of the running time, the witch seems genuinely helpful towards the bachelor, spiriting up not just one but five potential brides, but she changes her tune towards the end when she reveals that they were a figment of her twisted imagination all along, and that the bachelor is helplessly in her power.
The bachelor’s comeuppance is particularly satisfying because everything about him in the early stages, from his foppish costume (topped by an absurdly Napoleonic hat) and airy waves of the hand, to what appears to be an initial assumption that he won’t have to pay - which is then followed by a casual, dismissive toss of a purse of money as if to suggest that there’s plenty where that came from. Clearly a fake himself, his desire for an equally fake bride seems all too fitting, as is his ultimate transformation into a humble beast of burden, which the witch then thoroughly mistreats for good measure.
The special effects are mostly very straightforward jump-cuts, though a combination of these and well-judged movement allows Méliès to create the impression that the various women are “unfolded” from each other, as though multiple cut-outs on a paper chain. The design of the witch’s lair includes many props familiar from earlier Méliès films, such as the outsized scissors from The Doctor and the Monkey (Le Savant et le chimpanzé, 1900).
Some severe damage at the start of the untinted print on Flicker Alley’s DVD quickly settles down to a generally very acceptable picture, with only a few faint tramlines and occasional surface blemishes (and a brief moment when the image blurs) marring what follows. Plenty of fine detail aids appreciation of the grotesque décor of the witch’s lair. Eric Beheim’s electronic score, augmented by tinkling bells, is fairly generic, but does the job effectively enough.
Links
- Internet Movie Database entry.
- Jshaide’s review (Rotten Tomatoes forum)
Posted on 30th June 2008
Under: Horror, Jump-Cuts, 1901 | No Comments »
A man enters a mysterious cavern full of strange gargoyles and other arcane objects. Bumping into a skeleton, he takes it down and places it on a chair, waves his hands and transforms it into a woman sporting a helmet, sword and shield. He helps her up, and transforms her costume into a long, flowing dress. He stands behind her and hypnotises her into sleep, catching her falling body. He places her across two benches and removes them, leaving her suspended in mid-air. She then dissolves back into the skeleton, which the man picks up and “bows” to the audience. The man and the skeleton then dance, after which the man picks up the skeleton and takes it away. The man then causes a stool to float into the air and perform various tumbling tricks on top of a table. A woman appears, surrounded by four dancers, all clad in diaphanous dresses. The man tries to grab them, but his hands pass through their bodies, and they vanish. He then produces two stools and a smaller table and makes them dance. He then bows to the audience, shoots up in the air and re-emerges through a trapdoor in the floor. He then removes his outer garments, wig and false beard to reveal Georges Méliès, who dons a straw boater, lights a cigarette, bows again, and leaves.
There is little narrative content aside from presenting all these various visions, and if there was any doubt about the film’s underlying showing-off purpose, it’s dispelled in the closing seconds, when the magician rips off his clothes, wig and false beard to reveal the dapper Méliès himself - which may also have been a means of asserting the authorship of the film as well as the various onscreen effects.
A clown explores a cave, in which two stools stand either side of a small table. The left-hand one contains a bottle, the right-hand one a glass and a candle. The clown jumps over the table, then sits on it. He spots the bottle and the glass, and his right arm detaches itself from his body, floating over to pick up the bottle and bring it over to him. His left arm performs a similar feat with the glass. He pours himself a drink, and his arms return the bottle and glass to their respective stools, before joining themselves back onto his body. He produces a pipe and looks around for a light. Spotting the candle, his head detaches itself from his body and floats across to it, lights the pipe, floats back and reattaches itself. He tries to make himself comfortable, crossing one leg over the other, before deciding that it’s better if each leg detaches itself and gets a stool apiece. The table then vanishes, and the clown falls to the ground. He summons his legs back, and they reattach themselves. He begins to dance, his limbs and head detaching themselves from his trunk before reforming to allow him to take a bow. For an encore, he removes his head, sits on it, and replaces it. He then tucks it under his arm and leaves the cave.
Though in generally good physical condition (until the very final frames, which degenerate into a mass of chemical blotches), the print on Flicker Alley’s DVD is somewhat contrasty, though the simplicity of the staging, with the white limbs set against the dark cave-mouth, means that it could take a lot more damage before the film was adversely affected. Exposure fluctuations seem to be a by-product of Méliès’ original multiple exposures, which may also explain the faint tramlining in the more elaborate effects shots. Disappointingly, the Mont Alto Orchestra’s score makes little attempt at matching the visuals, though as a generic accompaniment it’s effective enough.
A Brahmin walks into an exotic jungle clearing and looks around. He produces a large basket and opens it, revealing it to be empty. He hangs it from two wires attached to trees, and begins to play the flute. A gigantic caterpillar enters the clearing and raises its head up to the Brahmin’s, who kisses it. He removes the lid of the basket, picks up the caterpillar, and stuffs it inside. A beautiful woman sporting butterfly wings emerges, and flutters above the basket, which the Brahmin removes. He begins to flatter the butterfly-woman, who descends to the ground. She begins a lively dance, defying all the Brahmin’s attempts at capturing her. Finally, he drapes a sheet over her. Two maidservants enter the clearing and remove the sheet to reveal a princess. The Brahmin falls to his knees. She pushes him with her foot, and he turns into a caterpillar.
Even when he successfully manages to trap the butterfly-woman under a sheet, the princess who emerges regards him with disdain, treating him as a servant before turning him into a caterpillar, making the role-reversal complete. As with the Rajah before him, Freud would doubtless have a great deal to say about the anxieties revealed by this particular scenario, which literally reduces the Brahmin to a helpless, limp worm at the end. 
A genteel couple try to take tea, but are interrupted first by the sound of their rowdy upstairs lodgers, and then by one of them putting his foot through their ceiling, causing clouds of plaster dust to fall on their table. They quickly leave the room, while their neighbours steal their wine with a fishing line. One of them descends into the downstairs room, wraps up the turkey in the tablecloth, climbs on the table and passes it up through the hole. He then dons a sheet and, with the aid of two improvised props, pretends to be a wild elephantine figure. The woman from downstairs walks back into the room, sees it, screams and runs off. The lodger drapes the sheet over a couple of chairs and climbs back up through the ceiling. The woman runs back in armed with a broom, and hits the sheet, causing the chairs to collapse. She and her husband summon a policeman, and show him the hole in their ceiling. As he looks up, the lodgers pour a bucket of flour over him and drop their bedding through the hole, leaving him trapped and helpless on the table. He gets up and leaves. All three lodgers descend through the hole, barricade the door and begin to trash the place.
The contrast between upstairs and downstairs is established in the first seconds, with a genteel couple having a quiet meal (the quietness conveyed by their comparative stillness) and their three rowdy lodgers having a wild party upstairs. They quickly make the transition from boisterousness to vandalism, outright theft (of their neighbours’ food and wine), practical jokes, and blatant disrespect for the law. There are no apparent special effects other than the set design and its breakaway floor - even the “transformation” of one of the lodgers into a strange elephantine creature is effected onscreen. 
A man wakes up in bed, yawns and stretches. He gets out of bed, clad in full-length underwear, reaches for his trousers and tries to put them on. He inserts one leg, but the trousers turn into his waistcoat. Believing that it’s his mistake, he laughs and tries to put the waistcoat on properly. It changes back into his trousers, so he tries to put them on again, only to find himself inserting his feet into the sleeves of his jacket. He inserts his arms, and they change back into his trousers, and then again into his waistcoat. Now visibly annoyed, he tries putting on a boot, which turns into a top hat, and back into a boot again when he puts it on his head. He tosses it angrily to one side and goes back to bed.
There’s no reference to trains in the French title (which translates as “A man in a hurry gets up in the morning”), though the backdrop shows a railway viaduct: presumably the downside of an otherwise spectacular view is that it’s all too easy to see the train approaching when one is desperate to catch it. The man also appears to be extremely well-off - the ornate carvings surrounding the view, the wrought-iron bed, the waistcoat and top hat all suggest that he’s used to being in control. This may also explain why he gives up so quickly.
An elderly doctor keeps a monkey in a cage. When he briefly pops out, the monkey breaks free, leaps onto a nearby table and begins to systematically wreck the doctor’s study. After overturning a cupboard, he climbs up the stairs to the doctor’s bedroom. The doctor grabs it by the tail, which comes off. While the monkey trashes the bedroom, the doctor is attempting to tame the tail, which has developed a life of its own. The tail affixes itself to his face, to the horror of the doctor’s maid, who comes in to assist, eventually pulling it off. While they attack the tail with various implements, the monkey smashes a hole through the bedroom floor and jumps through it into the study. The monkey then attacks the doctor, and then the maid, ripping off her skirt and leaving her in her petticoat.
Méliès was clearly so proud of the set that it would very soon make a repeat appearance, to more dramatically coherent effect, in 
A bearded man leads eight women to stand behind an apparatus incorporating a trestle table, wooden steps and a large barrel. He orders each woman to climb into the barrel, roughly pushing down their heads. When all eight are in the barrel, he turns it over, revealing it to be empty. He rights the barrel, and leaves, and then reappears in the barrel.
Despite dating from 1900, it could have been made at any point in the previous five years since Méliès’ discovery of the creative potential of the jump-cut, and one suspects that this was knocked off relatively quickly to meet some kind of production quota. Although the French title hints at a classical allusion, with its reference to Danaids, the relationship between the film and the original Greek myth seems somewhat tenuous: there, forty-nine out of fifty daughters of King Danaus were sentenced to fill bottomless barrels with water for all eternity as a punishment. This might have been conveyed more effectively if there had been a sense that the barrel routine was about to be repeated, and continued indefinitely, but instead we merely get the perpetrator of the trick bowing to the audience as though he was an ancient precursor of a modern stage magician like Méliès himself.
A businessman enters a hotel room and hangs his umbrella, coat and hat on the leftmost of a row of hooks. He then removes his jacket and waistcoat and places them on a nearby chair. As he removes his trousers, another coat and hat appear on his back and head. He removes these and places them on the hook next to his original coat and hat, but as he removes them, another hat appears on his head, and he is clad in a pair of check trousers. This process is repeated several times, with the businessman becoming increasingly agitated. When all the hooks are full, he starts flinging his clothes into the corner, the pile growing increasingly large. Finally, he jumps on the bed and pulls the covers over himself, only for the bed to vanish. He resumes undressing again, and discovers that he is now wearing multiple layers of clothing.
The frenzy continues right to the end of the film, even beyond what appears to be the climax (the vanishing of the bed at a crucial moment, a Méliès device now so familiar as to be somewhat predictable), as if to suggest that the poor man’s plight will continue indefinitely. The two earlier films mentioned above finished with the protagonists fleeing the room, though here (possibly exacerbated by the abrupt ending of the print under review) he seems doomed, Sisyphus-like, to try to undress for ever.
A maidservant lays the dinner table for two women and an elderly man, who try to sit down - but the chairs vanish and reappear on top of the table, causing them to hit the floor with a bump. They get up, replace the chairs, and sit on them without further incident. The man takes the lid off the tureen, sticks his spoon in, and is startled to find it expanding to three times its original size. Initial enthusiasm gives way to dismay when he finds two knee-length boots inside it. He angrily orders the maid to remove both them and the tureen. He sits back down and demands the first course. The maid brings in a roast turkey. The man stands and attempts to carve it, but the table’s legs suddenly extend so that the table-top is out of reach. The man climbs on a chair, and the table shrinks to its previous height. The trio sits down again, and the table vanishes, reappearing on the other side of the room. They move over there, and the table sinks through the floor, re-emerging in its original position. They move back there, and it sinks through the floor again. They get up, and the table reappears, this time bearing a ghastly spectre that performs a macabre dance. The women flee, and the man tries to hit it with a chair, but it passes right through it. The second time, the chair hits the table, which vanishes again. The spectre is replaced with a box of dynamite, which blows the man up against the wall. His limp body falls to the ground, and then jerks around as though possessed. The women return, but can do no more than stare.
So far, so familiar, but Méliès then turns the film into a full-blown ghost story, as a hideous spectre appears and dances on top of the table. It was created via a superimposition, which is why the host can’t hit it with his chair. The spectre then turns into a box of dynamite which blows the host against the wall. What happens afterwards isn’t clear - it seems as though his legs shatter as though made of china, leaving them uselessly limp, and supernatural forces then force him to dance in a spectacularly undignified fashion. It’s the final humiliation, and although the maid never reappears, one suspects there’s a certain amount of quiet satisfaction in the kitchen.