It was fun to use the ridiculous pun for my title. That said, this is the story of a man who can draw a head and bring it to life, even though it is disembodied. Through the full minute, the head is put on various standards and on a sword. Eventually, we are treated to the entire person, but that is only temporary.
5 Reviews
Mysterious Knight
Michael_Elliott28 March 2008
Mysterious Knight, The (1899)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
aka Le Chevalier mystere
Another magic show from director Melies has him playing a knight who draws a head on a chalk board and then brings it to life before attaching it to a body. This film runs just over a minute and while it's pretty good it really can't touch some of the director's better work. One of the special effects, the head through a sword, is somewhat botched but the disappearing acts are all well done as is the placing of the head on a body. If you're new to the director's work then you'll find this amusing but there are better films out there.
** 1/2 (out of 4)
aka Le Chevalier mystere
Another magic show from director Melies has him playing a knight who draws a head on a chalk board and then brings it to life before attaching it to a body. This film runs just over a minute and while it's pretty good it really can't touch some of the director's better work. One of the special effects, the head through a sword, is somewhat botched but the disappearing acts are all well done as is the placing of the head on a body. If you're new to the director's work then you'll find this amusing but there are better films out there.
Worth a watch for the visuals
Horst_In_Translation14 October 2013
Warning: Spoilers
The story was really nothing too exciting in this short film. It's another magic show by the grandmaster. Méliès has done that a couple times already, often better. But the visual aspects from this short film make it interesting. The lone head we see for most of the 90 seconds chattering wildly or was he singing? Not sure and sadly we didn't have sound yet. Also this short film is a perfect example of how his art direction and set decoration was miles ahead of everybody else in the business back then. The large owl is just perfect. All in all, the film is worth a watch for silent film enthusiasts, but that's pretty much it.
More of the same from Georges Méliès...though this isn't a bad thing.
planktonrules9 September 2020
Filmmaker Georges Méliès was first a stage magician. Using what he'd learned doing this, he decided to make films where he could make things seem to appear, disappear or change before your very eyes. The style of
"The Mysterious Knight" is very typical of many of his films. And, in at least one hundred (probably double or perhaps even triple that), the director himself plays the magician on camera doing all the tricks.
This film consists of a guy in a Renaissance knight's costume does magic. He makes a head appear on his blackboard and then removes it from there and plays with it...and even impales in on his sword. However, it's important to note that all the while this head is talking and moving and looks like a real person's head...which it is. In a few of Georges Méliès' films, he would film footage and then superimpose it on new footage...making such a trick possible. Very advanced stuff for 1899...and well worth seeing.
This film consists of a guy in a Renaissance knight's costume does magic. He makes a head appear on his blackboard and then removes it from there and plays with it...and even impales in on his sword. However, it's important to note that all the while this head is talking and moving and looks like a real person's head...which it is. In a few of Georges Méliès' films, he would film footage and then superimpose it on new footage...making such a trick possible. Very advanced stuff for 1899...and well worth seeing.
Another dismembered head
Tornado_Sam13 October 2018
Warning: Spoilers
Having recently made one of the world's first multi-scene story films with the six-minute "Cinderella", director Georges Méliès returns to the trick films with this simple vignette in which the knight of the title (once again himself) draws a head on a blackboard and brings it to life. Once more, in this film we notice that the superimposed head is exposed against two black backgrounds: the chalkboard and the fireplace (this having been done previously in "The Four Troublesome Heads" of 1898). Additionally, the tricks are a little more complex, such as the head being put on a tripod, a sword (which was admittedly a little sloppy and revealing), and a bottle neck. Even the editing, such as making the entire person appear and taking the head off the blackboard, is used for different effects and ideas and creates a few new variations. Clearly these edits and superimpositions were, for the most part, done with care.
Of further note is the fade-out of the female character against the black background; such an effect was still a quite new (having been used also as a scene transition device in "Cinderella") and is done in an amazingly convincing way in this short.
I believe I read somewhere on a summary of this short that at the end the knight disappeared up the fireplace, which would mean that the ending is missing. I cannot guarantee this came from a reliable source, since the Star Film Catalogue offers no description of the movie to declare it a true statement. The film now ends with the knight wiping the image off the blackboard, and as it does seem like there he would have done a magical exit, I could see this being the actual ending--another reason also being that a disappearance in a fireplace was done later in "The Triple Conjurer and the Living Head" from 1900.
Of further note is the fade-out of the female character against the black background; such an effect was still a quite new (having been used also as a scene transition device in "Cinderella") and is done in an amazingly convincing way in this short.
I believe I read somewhere on a summary of this short that at the end the knight disappeared up the fireplace, which would mean that the ending is missing. I cannot guarantee this came from a reliable source, since the Star Film Catalogue offers no description of the movie to declare it a true statement. The film now ends with the knight wiping the image off the blackboard, and as it does seem like there he would have done a magical exit, I could see this being the actual ending--another reason also being that a disappearance in a fireplace was done later in "The Triple Conjurer and the Living Head" from 1900.
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