Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1903


The Drawing Lesson

Buy The Drawing Lesson now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article




'The Drawing Lesson, or the Living Statue' is a 1903 French short silent film by Georges Mlis. It was sold by Mlis's Star Film Company and is numbered 470471 in its catalogues, where it was advertised as a 'scne Louis XV trucs' ("Louis XV-era scene with trick effects").

Plot



In an ornate outdoor scene, a painter comes upon a decorated sculptural niche with a small fountain. Admiring the view, he sets up his easel and goes off to collect his art students. A moment later, a merry prankster comes upon the scene, and begins doing magical tricks, turning a barrel into a pedestal, a ball into a miniature sun, the sun into a woman's head, and a handkerchief and jacket into her dress. Soon, in front of the niche, he has completed a statue of a woman in classical garb.

The painter and his students return, and are pleasantly surprised to find the statue there. As the painter bustles around the woman, she comes to life and steals the hat from his head. Then she transforms into an enormous fountain, into which the laughing prankster douses the painter.

Production



Mlis plays the prankster in the film, which uses a wide range of special effects, including substitution splices, multiple exposures on a black background, dissolves, and a cascade of real water. Mlis reused the motifs of the sun and the woman's head in his film 'Alcofrisbas, the Master Magician' later that year.

References




Buy The Drawing Lesson now from Amazon

<-- Return to movies from 1903



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1095483769.