A Lightning Sketch
| A Lightning Sketch | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Georges Méliès |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 20 meters/65 feet each[1] |
| Country | France |
| Language | Silent |
A Lightning Sketch (French: Dessinateur) was a series of four 1896 French short silent films directed by Georges Méliès and released by his Star Film Company.[1] Each film showed an artist—very probably Méliès himself—drawing a caricature of a notable political figure in less than a minute.[2]
Three similar films were also made at about the same time, in August 1896, by the Anglo-American filmmaker J. Stuart Blackton, as a series called Blackton Sketches; Blackton would later make another film in the same vein, The Enchanted Drawing (1900).[2] Méliès returned to sketching on film in his 1903 short The Untamable Whiskers, in which the process of drawing comic faces on a blackboard was undercranked so as to seem to occur with great speed.[3] Numerous political caricatures by Méliès, presumably similar to those made in the A Lightning Sketch films, survive in the collection of the Centre national du cinéma.[2]
All four films in the A Lightning Sketch series are currently presumed lost.[2]
Summary
The following table provides the number assigned to each film in the Star Film Company catalogues; the original English and French titles; and the subject of the drawing made in each film.[4]
| # | English title | French title | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
| 37 | A Lightning Sketch (Mr. Thiers) | Dessinateur express (M. Thiers) | Adolphe Thiers |
| 57 | A Lightning Sketch (Chamberlain) | Dessinateur (Chamberlain) | Joseph Chamberlain |
| 61 | A Lightning Sketch (H.M. Queen Victoria) | Dessinateur (Reine Victoria) | Queen Victoria |
| 73 | A Lightning Sketch (Von Bismarck) | Dessinateur (Von Bismarck) | Otto von Bismarck |
References
- 1 2 Hammond, Paul (1974). Marvellous Méliès. London: Gordon Fraser. pp. 135–6. ISBN 0900406380.
- 1 2 3 4 Malthête, Jacques; Mannoni, Laurent (2008), L'oeuvre de Georges Méliès, Paris: Éditions de La Martinière, p. 50, ISBN 9782732437323
- ↑ Frazer, John (1979), Artificially Arranged Scenes: The Films of Georges Méliès, Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., p. 136, ISBN 0816183686
- ↑ Release data from Malthête & Mannoni 2008, pp. 336–7; subject identification from Malthête & Mannoni 2008, p. 50.
External links
- A Lightning Sketch (Mr. Thiers) at the Internet Movie Database
- A Lightning Sketch (Chamberlain) at the Internet Movie Database
- A Lightning Sketch (H.M. Queen Victoria) at the Internet Movie Database
- A Lightning Sketch (Von Bismarck) at the Internet Movie Database