Another short film about a couple men playing cards. It's very very similar to "Partie d'écarté", only that the fourth person herein is not a servant, but most likely the wife to one of the players.
This is the film debut of master cinema magician Georges Melies featuring three men having a game of cards and because of the name Melies perhaps one might have expected more because there is no trick photography . It's just a mundane static shot of three men playing cards .
I guess this is the kind of film that a modern person would use his new camera on. It involves a foursome of men playing cards, smoking, and drinking.
An early film directed by and starring Georges Melies himself (positioned in the center of the card players), the film is nothing more than an exercise in composition, framing, and posing for the camera. Many early films like this, now lost to time, depicted the same innocuous scenarios of people interacting in common, routine scenarios, and the entertainment was more or less the fact that such a scene with interacting people in it could be filmed and watched after the fact.
At this stage in the history of the cinema, there was no copyright protection for individual films, so successful efforts were often redone by competitors.... and the ways in which they wound up doing things differently tells us more about their weaknesses and strengths than their original works.
Playing Cards (1896) ** 1/2 (out of 4)aka Une Partie de cartes This here was the first film ever directed by Georges Melies and it runs just over a minute and the title pretty much tells you all you need to know when it comes to the story. Three men sit around playing cards and ordering drinks.
You have to start somewhere and given that this is one of the first fictional films in moving picture history still surviving it is a privilege and required viewing for both film historians and fans of The Belle Epoque. Granted it may well be what the quartet of characters do on an everyday basis but once they are given direction it's documentary status is nullified.
Georges Méliès is considered by many to be the first genius filmmaker. "Une Partie de Cartes" is his first film and it shows none of his brilliance.
The only reason I've been generous with the rating is the fact this is Georges Melies very film and its also one of the earlest remake. Its basically a "rip off" of the year earlier 1896 lumiere film.
