Leto 1904

Using every known means of transportation, several savants from the Geographic Society undertake a journey through the Alps to the Sun which finishes under the sea.

The background of this picture represents a scene along the beautiful river Seine in Paris. A gentleman enters, and taking a blackboard from the side of the picture, he draws on it a sketch of a novelist. Then, standing in the centre, he causes the living features of his sketch to appear in the place of his own, which is utterly devoid of whiskers. The change is made so mysteriously that the eye cannot notice it until one sees quite another person in the place of the first. Again another sketch is shown on the board, this one being that of a miser; then an English cockney; a comic character; a French policeman, and last of all, the grinning visage of Mephistopheles. It is almost impossible to give this film a more definite description; suffice it to say that it is something entirely new in motion pictures and is sure to please. (Méliès Catalog)

A magician conjures up a mermaid while fishing.

Documentary on the process of hay-making, from the cutting of the grass to the stacking of the hay.

Billy Bitzer filmed 21 short actualities inside the Pittsburgh Westinghouse Works in April and May of 1904. Audiences of the day would have been treated to footage of factory panoramas, women winding armatures and turbines being assembled. These industrial films were produced for the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.

Pierrot goes to the house of his love to serenade her, but her father kicks him out. Soon the moon and its goddess Diana come towards the man and offers him something better.

A “madman” escapes prison and the torments of his warders.

A group of men work on various parts of a large generator, assembling the pieces

In a public place in Constantinople at the corner of a bazaar, the executioner is seated upon a stone and is resting from his daily labors while eating a crust of bread. Suddenly there come running into the place a lot of Turkish men and women preceding some Turkish policemen, who drag along four prisoners in chains. The policemen shut up the four prisoners in the pillory. Their four heads stick up through the huge plank, which is provided with four openings. One of the policemen urges the executioner to decapitate the prisoners. He accordingly seizes a mighty sabre and cuts off by a single stroke the four heads, which roll upon the ground.

Rows of women are shown at tables with winding machines. They wind using material from spools behind them, apparently putting the finished products on the table in front of them. Various supervisory staff, male and female, walk through the aisles, checking the work of the women.

A cook has his hands full with three mischievous devils, who pop in and out of his kitchen.

As a conjurer awaits an audience, a procession announces the arrival of a royal representative, carried in a sedan chair, to see him. The conjurer then has a large box brought in. It is opened, revealing a very large folding fan. When the fan is spread out, the designs on it begin to change and move. And this is far from the last of the surprises that the conjurer has in store.

A Chinese conjurer stands next to a table, it becomes two tables. A fan becomes a parasol, lanterns appear and disappear. The conjurer spins the open parasol in front of himself, and a dog leaps out from behind it. The dog becomes a woman, then a masked man appears. The conjurer sits them each on a box a few feet apart: suddenly the woman and man have changed places. The disappearing and the transfers continue in front of a simple backdrop.

Georges Melies the magician. Melies removes his own head, puts it in a glass box on a stool, then grows another one. Melies lights up a cigarette and blows smoke at his old head. The head gets payback by levitating above Melies and spewing water on him.

An inquisitor and two of his henchmen burn a woman at the stake. An angel intervenes.

A French aristocrat, who has recently arrived in America, has placed a personal advertisement in the newspaper...

A turbine is shown operating.

A man hides his valuables under his mattress before going to sleep, blissfully unaware of the two burglars on his roof.

Almost 200 women file by a device on the wall from which they take their time checks. A man runs half-way across the screen at the end of the film.

During a game of hide and seek, a new bride hides in a chest and remains undiscovered until a strange visitation thirty years later.