Hitchcoc There are seven chairs lined up on stage. A man (Melies) fills on, and then reproduces himself and fills the next, and so on. Each of the incarnations has a musical instrument. First they play in a conventional way, but eventually they will merge and become one man again. There is some clever reshuffling on the stage. One of the better ones.

wes-connors French magician and filmmaker Georges Melies has seven chairs lined up across your movie screen. He appears dressed as a musician and takes a seat, then a super-imposed Mr. Melies rises, with cymbals, from the first sitting Melies and sits in the second seat. From the second seat, a drumming Melies moves on to the next seat. This goes on until all seven seats are filled with different members of an instrumental orchestra. Melies plays each part. They perform enthusiastically for the audience and meld back into the original Melies. He is a one man band!****** L'homme orchestre (1900) Georges Melies ~ Georges Melies

Michael_Elliott One-Man Band, The (1900) *** (out of 4) aka L'Homme orchestre This here is one of director Melies best known and loved films. Melies plays a band leader and we see his spirits or doubles, come to life and make for an entire band. Buster Keaton would somewhat redo this film two decades later in The Play House and in my opinion it can't hold a candle to this film. The special effects hold up quite well and the way the spirits come to be is nicely done. Melies was certainly a genius and this is one of the highlights of his career.

Ben Parker Georges Melies was the founder of special effects in movies. Its really quite wonderful watching these little shorts: imagine you had the opportunity to realise for the first time the things that were possible with filmed images. By filming a scene, then removing or moving one element and filming it again and editing the two shots together you can make things disappear or jump from one side of the room to the other. This is true magic, and watching Melies discover these things is a special thing i'm glad i've had the opportunity to see.Aside from this value, the shorts still retain their immense fun for audiences an entire century after their creation. Now THAT is called staying power.In this short, Melies clones himself six times to fill six seats of an orchestra, then makes the seats disappear, then reappear, then makes himself disappear in a cloud of smoke. The music, i believe is Robert Israel, a great modern composer who's been doing us the honour of writing scores for many great silent movies, which adds immeasurably to our enjoyment of them.