Hitchcoc Most of the time when I view these pioneering efforts, I comment on how much one could do with so little. The plots are thin, but after all, it's 1900. This little wrestling bit is one of the best I've seen and I actually giggled as I watched it. It is especially engaging when the skinny guy (Melies himself) goes against the much bigger man. What transpires is ingenious, with some masterful animation. I especially enjoyed when the big guy flattens Melies and peels him off the floor. Great fun.

framptonhollis At the very, very beginning of cinema, cinemagician Georges Melies refused to be caught between the boundaries of limit. Despite lack of cinematic technique at the time, Melies worked hard to crate what his imagination desired, and thus, film as an art form significantly developed in the process. This early action-comedy hybrid is a wacky, cartoonish depiction of a manic wrestling match made all the more insane by the constant disappearing, reappearing, morphing, etc. of the wrestlers. Men are torn apart and put back together, they are surrealistically flattened, and keep switching back and forth from being women. it's a ridiculous little movie, and hugely imaginative and impressive for its time, particularly in a visual sense. I was legitimately wow-ed by this film's special effects, even more so than with Melies' other movies. Remember: this movie was made back in 1901, well over 100 years ago, and yet it still is jam packed with some of the most magical cinematic tricks of all time 9not to mention, much of it is still also genuinely funny).

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "The Fat and the Lean Wrestling Match" is a Georges Méliès short film that tells us a but about gender roles around 1900, 115 years ago. Very early, we see two women in fancy dresses and they reappear in this almost 2-minute-long short film, but most of the time we see two men wrestling. But it's more than that. Méliès uses trick photography again to create 3 funny and awkward situations where obviously one of the fighters was a doll used for that particular moment. All in all, it's a solid Méliès film, not among his best. Obviously, this is still black-and-white and silent, even if there are versions out there where people used soundtracks. Not that great too watch though except the scenes where the master used the trick photography I mentioned before.

Red-Barracuda In this film, master cinematic experimenter Georges Méliès uses his celebrated trickery to depict a wrestling match. The effect is like a live action cartoon. Except that this is 1901 and animated cartoons hadn't even been invented yet! In other words it's quite original. And it's really still quite amusing too. Méliès fills its short running time with a barrow load of comic invention. We have women morphing into men; a man having his head and limbs knocked off and reassembled; and a fellow who is flattened like a pancake. What this movie shows, apart from Méliès mastery of visual trickery, is his sense of humour and comic timing. Some comedy shows from a few years ago are no longer amusing, so it's really quite impressive that this feature from over one hundred years ago still manages to raise a few smiles.