RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

He_who_lurks I thought this short was very well done. It is one of the few silent films that still fascinates and intrigues today, as it is chock-full of special effects. Some of this Edwin S. Porter borrowed from Georges Melies, who made many dream films similar to this one. But I actually think Porter did a much better job here than Melies would've done and his effects are a step ahead.In this 5 minute short, a rarebit fiend (for those who don't know what that is, it's rabbit, so this guy is obsessed with cooked rabbit) gorges himself and not long after he's finished he starts hallucinating (he also had too much alcohol as well). The world spins around him (this is a simply amazing effect and looks excellent even today), and he cannot make his way home. A man helps him home where he gets in bed and starts to have terrible dreams. His bed flies through mid air above the city and he gets caught on a weather-vane. The effects all look amazing. The most well-known sequence of the movie would have to be the demons picking away at the guy's head.The whole thing is just weird and is very good for 1906. I mean, it sold 192 copies! Cool and something that is still watchable today.

Paularoc A man way overindulges in food and drink and then pays the price in bad dreams and hallucinations. All the man wants to do is go to bed and sleep it off but no sweet dreams for him. Instead there's a jumping and swirling bed, devil imps on the man's head, the drunk and the lamp post bit, and other well done special effects. Is this film historically important? Well, sure. It's directed by Edwin Porter and is inspired by a Windsor McCay comic strip and is a marvel of trick photography. And all of that is important. But what I found amazing (and perhaps shouldn't have) was how very entertaining and fun a 1906 six plus minute film could be. This little film is both fascinating and a lot of fun.

SnorrSm1989 In one respect, it's funny how people complain that nearly all commercial film has to offer these days is a never-ending range of special effects, rather than focus on characterization in order to move a story forward. I won't exactly defy this opinion, but I find it interesting because one may say that's pretty much how narrative cinema began its course, attracting audiences with its ability to go beyond physical laws and still let the special effects remain a mystery. Surely the earliest films of a Méliès or a Porter could not offer much depth in terms of characterization, which was one reason why they could never, according to most at the time of their making, be considered a threat to the art of live theater. Even so, these films were still bound to fascinate as their fantastic visual extensions seemed to require no compromises.Initially based on a comic strip by Winsor McCay and featuring vaudevillian Jack Brawn, THE DREAM OF A RAREBIT FIEND may not strike one as Edwin S. Porter's most outstanding achievement. He had behind him THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, which for its time was remarkably complex in structure and photography, so by comparison, the nightmares of a man-about-town who has allowed himself too much food and drink in one evening appears rather anchored in the vaudeville-tradition, less uniquely suited for the possibilities of film. At least it's easy to think in that direction at first. However, Porter does not disappoint; through inventive, unpredictable use of the camera, he did in 1906 make a strong case as to just why film deserved to be estimated as a medium on its own terms, rather than being compared to the theater stage. Certainly the feeling of intimacy provided by live actors performing on a real stage cannot be obtained with film, but Porter's recognition of film's advantages to the theater stage is one of the things which make his films so enjoyable to this day, THE DREAM OF A RAREBIT FIEND being no exception. Plotwise it may be rather ordinary, but it's what Porter does with this much-used topic that is the point. The clever effects have a close to dazzling effect at times, and it's not hard to see why it has later gained a reputation as a "surreal" work. That Porter, like Méliès, chose to explore the technical aspects of film- making in the earliest days, rather than consider more advanced methods of telling a story, may simply have been because even they were unable to foresee the full potential of the new medium; but seen in retrospect, to let technique come before dramaturgy was in fact a necessity. Every creative medium is a handcraft in essence, and the rules must be settled before they can be questioned.

MARIO GAUCI Famous fantasy short with a moral: a man spends a night stuffing himself with food and drink in a restaurant; stumbling his way home, he sees the buildings 'dancing' around him and, on arriving, things only get worse. The bed starts to shake violently as if possessed and even throws itself, with the man still tucked in, through the window (the film's single funniest bit)! Flying around town a' la Scrooge, he's sure to have learnt his lesson by the next morning.As far as I know, the only other Porter film I've watched is THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1903), celebrated for being the first Western; this one, then, contains a number of crude camera tricks in the contemporary style of Frenchman Georges Melies. Incidentally (and Michael Elliott is sure to raise an eyebrow or two at this!), in spite of their undeniable historical value, I can't bring myself to appreciate such primitive stuff other than as mere curiosities