Good idea lost in the noise

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This is yet another obtuse treatment of Melies in hell. I wonder if he feared going there or was just fascinated with the concept. This involves a Sorcerer or Alchemist who is messing with spells. He has an assistant. For whatever reason, he summons Satan and Old Scratch begins to torment him. There is a bit with a stained glass window and woman who is put together. Of course, Melies always brings women in out of the blue. Usually, they pose or dance. The visual effects are OK but it's well trampled territory.

Lord only knows what this one was about. Georges Melies was clearly running out of ideas by the time he made this, so there's nothing particularly new here. There's certainly no story-line as far as I could make out, other than perhaps one chap being drugged by some devil type and then awakening to perform magic tricks on a lady in a window that he brings to life. People appear, disappear then re-appear before disappearing again with monotonous regularity, apparently until Melies' camera ran out of film.I can't imagine even audiences from 1910 being impressed by this one, and on this evidence it's hardly surprising that Melies' film-making career would be over in a couple more years.

I noticed that the "Georges Méliès Encore" DVD put all the bizarre and difficult to understand shorts towards the end of the disc. Among them, this is THE most confusing. I do understand that the weird looking guy with the feather on his head is supposed to be the Devil--but he looks nothing like what modern illustrators would conceive. It's Georges Méliès himself in this role. Without intertitle cards, it's hard to know exactly what's transpiring--and I watched it twice to be as certain as I could! A guy is apparently working on stained glass panels for a church. The Devil sneaks in and gives the guy a Mickey. While asleep, the Devil messes with the stained glass. Then, the guy awakens and does a whole lotta magic (a trademark of a Georges Méliès film) in which he makes ladies appear and disappear--all to the detriment of the story--which, is appears, is practically non-existent. Nice effects, incomprehensible story.

Over the seventeen years (1896-1913) of his film-making, Méliès of course reused some ideas and patterns, for instance the magic devil/imp as in this piece. But still, each of those somewhat similar films also contain original content that makes watching them fun (if you go for such old material at all).Here we have an old scholar/alchimist brooding over a book, challenged by the devil, and going through the familiar sorcery to create a woman by throwing pieces of clothing against a stain-glass church window, like a jigsaw puzzle (and later in reverse). The woman also multiplies herself five-fold so as to match a similar paravent. I know worse ways of spending 7:16 minutes of my life.. :^)