Le Locataire diabolique (1909) - film review

A respectable looking man arrives at a boarding house and asks for a room.  The concierge shows him to his room, which is in the process of being redecorated.  Once the concierge has gone on his way, the new lodger throws the decorator out of the window and starts to unpack his belongings.  From his small bag he produces a table cloth, under which a table magically appears.  He then pulls a large chest from his bag, from which he extracts several items of furniture, a piano, many paintings and, finally, his entire family.  When the day comes for the rent to be paid, the lodger brings his furniture to life to scare off the concierge.  As the concierge goes to fetch the police, the lodger hastily packs up his belongings and makes a hurried exit.

For this, one of his later films, Georges Méliès revisits the career that earned his reputation before he turned to filmmaking, that of the stage conjuror.  Much of the film is taken up with an elaborate conjuring trick, with Méliès (playing the part of the diabolical lodger) pulling an improbable assortment of large objects out of a small travelling bag.  This is a variation on the kind of conjuring act which Méliès would have been familiar with, except that the ability to use special effects (multiple exposure and trick splicing) allows him to make the illusion even more fantastic.  The film is in colour – meaning that each frame of film was coloured by hand (no mean feat for a film of this length) – and this adds greatly to its sense of energy and zany appeal.

© James Travers 2003

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?