Going to Bed Under Difficulties
Le Déshabillage impossible, 1900, 1m53s
Star Film Catalogue No. 312-313
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.
Going to Bed Under Difficulties, whose French title translates as ‘Impossible Undressing’, is another set of variations on a theme already established by The Bewitched Inn (L’Auberge ensorcelée, 1897) and the then very recent Up-To-Date Spiritualism (Spiritisme abracadabrant, 1900). Once again, we have a man - some kind of business traveller, judging from his apparel at the start - attempting the ostensibly simple task of undressing for bed, only to find himself thwarted at every turn when every item of clothing he removes is instantly replaced by another.
Where this differs from and arguably improves on Up-To-Date Spiritualism is its cumulative sense of the absurd - whereas in the previous film, the various items of clothing simply vanish, here they remain in the room, rapidly filling up even a generous array of hooks before mounting up in the corner. Despite the special effects once again exclusively consisting of the simple jump-cut, the unfortunate protagonist’s movements are even more frenzied than before, creating a remarkably convincing impression of continuous movement in a film that was almost assembled frame by frame.
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.
Méliès wasn’t the only filmmaker wringing multiple variations on this particular theme. In 1901, his British counterpart W.R. Booth made Undressing Extraordinary, or The Troubles of a Tired Traveller, which was clearly directly inspired by Méliès’ film (both the situation and the dominant jump-cut technique are essentially identical) - though Booth also threw in a couple of variations of his own, such as supernatural saucer and the unexpected appearance of a human skeleton.
The untinted print on Flicker Alley’s DVD is quite grainy and contrasty - though nowhere near as bad as Addition and Subtraction (Tom Whisky ou l’illusionniste toqué, 1900) - and there’s a fair bit of surface damage, especially at the start and end, with pronounced tramlines running throughout. Eric Beheim’s electronic score begins in an upbeat mode, but rapidly becomes as relentless as the endless parade of clothing, increasing in tempo to match the protagonist’s growing desperation.
Links
- Internet Movie Database entry.
- Jshaide’s review (Rotten Tomatoes forum)
- BFI Screenonline on W.R. Booth’s Undressing Extraordinary