Silent Fantasy
see all genres ›Trick photography, fantastical design elements and fanciful themes were naturals for silent cinema, from Melies' magical miniatures to the mammoth mythological depictions of Fritz Lang's Valhalla hijinks.
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Genres / Silent / Silent Fantasy
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The Night Before Christmas
"A Visit from St. Nicholas," the memorable holiday poem by Clement Clarke Moore, is adapted for the screen by longtime Edison Manufacturing Company director Edwin S. Porter. "'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a...Watch Movie
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A Little Girl Who Did Not Believe in Santa Claus
When a rich boy learns from a poor girl that she does not believe in Santa Claus because he has never visited her, the boy decides to get to the bottom of this travesty. You've never seen anything like what happens next. This 1907 Edison short directed by Edwin S. Porter...Watch Movie
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The Golden Beetle
As a sorcerer captures a beetle and casts it into his cauldron, it transforms into a glorious woman wearing golden beetle wings and soon turns the tables by casting her own delightful spells. Filled with poetic trick cinematography and optical effects, Segundo de Chomon's THE...Watch Movie
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The Magic Hoop
Émile Cohl mixes live-action and stop-motion animation in this charming evocation of the power of imagination. A magician shapes his cane into a hoop with strange properties for a young girl. Costume changes and city promenades give way towards greater abstraction as the film becomes absorbed by...Watch Movie
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The Puppet's Nightmare
The nightmare of Émile Cohl’s chalk animation is one of unreliable appearances. Fishermen catch fish which eat them whole. Ladders transform into coils which just as suddenly take the form of angry mustachioed soldiers. The human figure at the receiving end of these...Watch Movie
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Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
In 1905, Segundo de Chomón added intertitles and hand-tinting to a film previously released by Pathe in 1902. The events in the film play out as they do in the fairy tale: Ali Baba chances upon the Forty Thieves' desert stash-house and steals some of their treasure. His...Watch Movie
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Jack and the Beanstalk
Fairy tales constituted one of the earliest and most successful forms of elaborate storytelling on film, notably Georges Méliès's CINDERELLA (1899) and BLUE BEARD (1902). Inspired by such European achievements, Porter made this ten-shot fiction film that told its story in a...Watch Movie
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Scrooge
Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is a Victorian morality tale of an old and bitter miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, who undergoes a profound experience of redemption over the course of one Christmas Eve. This 1923 version of Charles Dickens' immortal tale was also released to theatres as A CHRISTMAS...Watch Movie
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Santa Claus
SANTA CLAUS, photographed in the wilds of Alaska, tells the story of the man-in-the-red-suit and what it takes to prepare for his yearly one-day trek around the world. It is an admittedly usual low-budget production yet fascinating to watch, bookended by references to THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS.Watch Movie
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Scrooge
Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is a Victorian morality tale of an old and bitter miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, who undergoes a profound experience of redemption over the course of one Christmas Eve. A long-thought-lost version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." This film was re-released in...Watch Movie
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Aladin, or the Wonderful Lamp
An extravaganza of early special effects, the Pathé ALADIN (lacking the more common double "d") delights in the story’s magical transformations. Trick shots and striking color tinting accent the elastic reality that comes with the wonderful lamp. The fantasia only lasts a...Watch Movie
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Tannhäuser
Though different in spelling and pronunciation, Thanhouser’s adaptation of "Tannhäuser" was probably inevitable. The opera, with original libretto and music by Wagner, based on traditional legends, was the first Wagner opera seen in the United States and enjoyed great popularity throughout the...Watch Movie
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Cinderella
An elaborately produced version of the well known fairy tale interrupted by just a few summarizing intertitles, with Florence LaBadie and Harry Benham. Although in-camera trick photography is important for the story, it is rather conventional, having been introduced over ten years earlier by...Watch Movie
