Three friends are playing cards in a beer garden. One of them orders drinks. The waitress comes back with a bottle of wine and three glasses on a tray. The man serves his friends. They clink glasses and drink. Then the man asks for a newspaper. He reads a funny story in it and the three friends burst out laughing while the waitress merely smiles.
An astronomer has a terrifying dream.
A magician conjures up a mermaid while fishing.
A film from Méliès has him playing a magician who does a few tricks including making a woman disappear.
A chemist carries out a bizarre experiment with his own head.
A man has a fantastical nightmare involving, among other things, a grinning malevolent moon.
With godly entrapments, Zeus appears on the horizon, engages Hermes as an audience, and tries to throw some thunderbolts. They fizzle. Hephaestus tries to make some repairs but succeeds only in heating the bolts and burning Zeus's hands. Zeus conjures nine muses, but do their incantations help? He dismisses them as well as a visiting Pan, and his fits of pique become counter-productive. Can he get his powers back?
A band-leader has arranged seven chairs for the members of his band. When he sits down in the first chair, a cymbal player appears in the same chair, then rises and sits in the next chair. As the cymbal player sits down, a drummer appears in the second chair, and then likewise moves on to the third chair. In this way, an entire band is soon formed, and is then ready to perform.
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.
Pioneer filmmaker Georges Méliès performs his cine-magic act.
A weary clock-maker dozes off in a chair. While he is asleep, three women suddenly appear in the midst of his shop. They proceed to show the sleeping clock-maker some new kinds of clocks that they know how to make.
Alone in his room at an inn, a lustful old man is haunted by spirits.
An Egyptian prince has lost his beloved wife and he has sought a dervish who dwells at the base of the sphinx.
A family goes to a photographer. The photographer pushes the boy around, and no one seems to care. The boy gets his revenge.
A man tries to get a good night's sleep, but is disturbed by a giant spider that leaps onto his bed, and a battle ensues in hilarious comic fashion.
After being defeated in a fight by a local gang, local official Lu Fengyang sends his weak and sickly son Lu Xiaoqing to study with a master of the Kunlun school of martial arts. Recovered and strong, he comes upon the Red Lotus Temple, and puts up there for the night. Unable to sleep, he begins looking around the palatial temple, and discovers a room decorated with many images of Buddhist demons, and an altar to worship them... Purposely destroyed serial film whose 19 full length chapters (averaging 86 minutes each) originally ran 27 hours in length.
A rocky sea voyage as reenacted by Georges Méliès.
A staged Wild West kidnapping goes awry when the cowboys accidentally capture an actress who uses her acting skills to turn the tables on them.
A man surprises a woman. While the film is lost, there is a new digital version based on re-creation from a flipbook produced by Léon Beaulieu around the same time
Two men in a cave perform magic.
