His First Job (1908) User Reviews

His first job...and I suspect he'll soon be looking for his second!

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 10 September 2020]

"His First Job" is relatively long for a Georges Méliès picture. And, compared to the rest of his extant movies today, the copy is in exceptionally good condition.

The story begins at a grocery store. A customer comes in with his nephew and asks for a job. The shop owner agrees...not realizing what he would be in for by hiring the young man, as the young guy is an idiot and immediately starts hitting on one of the shop girls. And, it all goes downhill from here!

At five minutes, this is a long film from the filmmaker. He did make a few that lasted up to about 20 minutes, but these were the exceptions. Most were one to three minutes long....and being a bit longer, it gives the story more time to transpire and a bit more depth.

So is it any good? Well, it's decent...but not exactly among the filmmaker's best. It is unusual, however, that it's a straight comedy with none of the expected camera tricks that Méliès was known for doing...which is nice considering he made over 500 films and you wouldn't want them all to be the same.

Not Very Good at It

[boblipton · 5/10 · 24 November 2013]

A well-dressed man comes into a busy grocery store and gets a young man a job: his nephew perhaps. Now low man on the totem pole, he finds himself the subject of abuse in this slapstick comedy from Georges Melies.

With Pathe and Gaumont doing magic-based films to take away his markets, Melies decided to counter-attack by invading their territory with simple slapstick films. However, despite some interesting photography in which the protagonist approaches very close to the camera to produce as close to a close-up as he ever got, the simple one-scene, one-take slapstick lacks much in variety to distinguish it.

No Laughs to Be Found

[Michael_Elliott · 19 August 2012]

His First Job (1908)

** (out of 4)

aka Amour et mélasse

Georges Melies' film has a new guy showing up in a store on his first day and he obviously just doesn't fit in as he makes one mistake after another. This was clearly the French filmmakers attempt to tell a "normal" film with normal "laughs" but it doesn't work. This thing is far from a bad movie and if it had come from any other director you really wouldn't give it a second thought but since this is Melies you can't help but say that this clearly wasn't his type of movie to make. The plat falls that the new guy goes through simply aren't funny as there's really no comic timing and I'd even say that everything that does happen to him just seems more forced than anything else. This isn't a horrible movie but it's clearly one just for Melies fans who must see everything that's available.

No Semblance of Reality

[Hitchcoc · 3/10 · 20 November 2017]

If Melies wanted to get into slapstick he needed to do better than this. A well-dressed man comes into a grocery store and pleads with the ownership to hire his nephew. First of all, he receives no training at all; secondly, he is an absolute idiot. Soon he is running around in a frantic effort to do something. When he is done, he has created extensive damage and driven several customers out of the store. He manages to trip over, land on, fall into, knock over, or demolish almost everything in the store. He also tries to have encounters with the women. It's obvious that Sir Georges was leaving the trick photography behind for a while.