The Flicker Alley DVD "Georges Méliès: Encore New Discoveries (1896-1911)" misidentified a partial hand-colored print of the 1906 film "Alchimiste Parafaragaramus ou La cornue infernale" (The Mysterious Retort) as this film, "L'hallucination de l'alchimiste" (An Hallucinated Alchemist) from 1897, which continues to be considered a lost film.
A weary traveler stops at an inn along the way to get a good night's sleep, but his rest is interrupted by odd happenings when he gets to his room--beds vanishing and re-appearing, candles exploding, pants flying through the air and his shoes walking away by themselves.
Angelic and demonic serpentine dance from dawn of cinema. Hand-colored frame by frame. Lumière no. 765 or 765.1 (colorized, different dancer?).
A romantic couple are transformed into skeletons via X-Rays. The film combines two very recent innovations: Wilhelm Roentgen's discovery of X-rays in 1895, and Georges Méliès' accidental realisation of the special-effects potential of the jump-cut in 1896.
A woman arrives home after the ball. Her servant helps her undress and bathe.
A short reenactment of a scene from Goethe's Faust.
Lasting for roughly 50 seconds, it shows the goodbyes of many passersby - first Europeans, then Palestinian Arabs, then Palestinian Jews - as a train leaves Jerusalem.
A rocky sea voyage as reenacted by Georges Méliès.
Wintertime in Lyon. About a dozen people, men and women, are having a snowball fight in the middle of a tree-lined street. The cyclist coming along the road becomes the target of opportunity. He falls off his bicycle. He's not hurt, but he rides back the way he came, as the fight continues.
A man has an encounter with several spooky apparitions in a castle that is evidently owned by the Devil.
A maid is out walking with her young charge when a soldier takes the boy's place.
Travellers, nomads and salesmen make their way along a dam next to the Nile.
Lumiere brothers actuality, filmed the 12th of March 1896 in Rome, in front of the Spanish Steps. It shows some couples of Ciociari performing their traditional dance. The Ciociari are the inhabitants of Ciociaria, a region in the south east of Rome.
Three people playing cards.
Women wash clothes in a washhouse on the edge of a river.
In front of a flour mill, two men fight. One is the miller, and he's swinging a bag of flour in the scuffle. The other is a chimney sweep, and he's swinging what may be a bag of flour, but when it breaks open, it's clearly something else. Well into the havoc, spectators gather and give chase to the flour-covered sweep and the "well-sooted" miller.
Mme. Bob Walter performs the serpentine dance.
Along the seashore near San Francisco, a boat belonging to the Pacific Coast Life Saving Service can just be seen as it returns to shore. Several men are at the oars. As the boat approaches land, it must make its way through rough waves and surging water.
An incident of the Franco-Prussian War. It shows the bombardment of a house at Bazeille. It is the animated reproduction of de Neuville's celebrated painting.
George Albert Smith's remake of Georges Méliès - Le Manoir du diable (The Haunted Castle) from 1896. This film is lost or never existed. Copies of it online are actually a Méliès film.
