Société des Etablissements Gaumont (FR)

Émile Cohl mixes live-action and stop-motion animation in this charming evocation of the power of imagination. A magician shapes his cane into a hoop with strange properties for a young girl. Costume changes and city promenades give way towards greater abstraction as the film becomes absorbed by what goes on inside the ring.

A grenadier had come to see his lover, a servant in the homes of wealthy bourgeois people. Hearing a noise, he is afraid of the masters and allows himself to be locked in a cupboard so as not to be seen. This is a hiding place that will spark many adventures.

A little girl, having lost her mother, finds herself on the street, where apaches (French gopniks) take her under their wing, forcing the orphan to steal in return for shelter.

The scene of the drama is a block of modern flats. Many of the residents are away at a dance, and the janitor and his staff decide upon a jollification of their own. They invite their friends to a fine high tea. Everybody is having a fine time, and their spirits are running high. We are now taken to the outside of the hall door, and watch with amusement the frantic pounding and bell ringing of the residents returning from their evening engagements and seeking admission to their apartments. The gay gathering inside are too busy with their own pleasure to heed the angry crowd outdoors. A policeman is called, but all to no purpose, and the tenants are all taken to the station for quarters for the night. Returning to the janitor's quarters we see that the jollifications have been concluded and the guests are all departing. The superior officer at the station concludes to make another effort to gain admittance in the building and, with the tenants at his heels, he approaches the flats.

An extremely clumsy man tries to clean a woman's house with disastrous results.

A midsummer Phantasy. The man having been attacked by footpads, puts on a suit of medieval armor which has been magnetized at a dynamo by two boys. Every metallic article which he approaches flies to him, to the great consternation of many people.

A haunted-hotel film, reviving a joke from a 1900 comic strip showing a sleeper being ejected from an electric bed.

A dog runs away with a length of sausage. Chaos erupts as the butcher chasing the dog collides with bystanders who angrily follow.

A mythological scene with the most beautiful effect.

A rich man rewards a tramp for defending him from muggers with a large sum of money in the form of a single bank note. Nobody can cash the big bill the tramp is carrying and hilarity ensues.

Overview of ideas about the police on the occasion of an attack on the bourgeois by Apaches gangsters.

A young woman's involuntary head twitch is misinterpreted, as she and her husband are pursued around Paris by an ever-growing group of adoring men.

French film produced and distributed by Gaumont (catalogue number 1590) originally named "La Terroriste" (as registered in the BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France) in 1907 and as published in Gaumont's catalogue of January 1908), the film was known in the U.S. by the title "Terrorist's Remorse" (according to the "Revised List of High-Class Original Films Made by Gaumont, Urban-Eclipse, Théophile Pathé, Carlo Rossi, Ambrosio and Other Foreign and American Companies", 1908, available in the Internet Archive website) and eventually changed to "Les Terroristes en Russie" in France (per Gaumont's catalogue of July 1909). Max Charlier and Mlle Loisier star in the film, but its director is still unknown, although Francis Lacassin attributed it to Louis Feuillade in 1995.

A man and his wife have a nice little racket of coining false money. While they go out to spend it, their daughter comes across a poor old woman and her daughter, without any money to buy a meat pie. She runs home and gets them one of the counterfeits...but the pie seller knows bad money.