Une nuit terrible

Une nuit terrible ("Una notte terribile") è un film diretto da Georges Méliès (Star Film 26), tra i primi in cui Méliès si cimenta in un soggetto fantastico, legato alla sua attività di prestigiatore.

Trama

Un uomo (Méliès) sta coricandosi, ma dopo aver spento una candela e essersi disteso, un grosso ragno inizia a salire le coperte. Quando arriva sul letto l'uomo si sveglia di soprassalto e il ragno salta sulla vicina parete. Allora l'uomo prende una scopa e lo schiaccia, facendolo cadere sul letto, dove lo calpesta. Quando è sicuro di averlo eliminato, lo afferra per una zampa e lo getta nel vaso da notte conservato nel comodino. Però non riesce ancora a dormire, probabilmente perché tormentato dalle zanzare (che non si vedono), per cui inizia a colpire a destra e a manca con una scarpa.

Produzione

In questo film Méliès non usa ancora i trucchi di tipo cinematografico, limitandosi a un unico trucco di tipo teatrale, l'animazione di un grosso ragno, che disturba il sonno del protagonista.
I trucchi di tipo cinematografico vennero usati poco dopo, in film come l'Escamotage d'une dame chez Robert-Houdin.

A Terrible Night (French: Une nuit terrible) is an 1896 French silent comedy film by Georges Méliès. It was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 26 in its catalogues, where it is listed with the descriptive subtitle scène comique.

Synopsis

A man tries to go to sleep, but is disturbed by a giant bug climbing up the bed and onto the wall. He attacks the bug with a broom and disposes of it in a chamber pot in a compartment of his bedside table.

Production

A Terrible Night predates Méliès's use of cinematic special effects in his films (the first known Méliès film with camera effects is The Vanishing Lady, made later in 1896). Rather, the giant bug is a simple pasteboard prop controlled with wire.
The film was made with the Méliès-Reulos portable camera in the open air, in the garden of Méliès's home in Montreuil, using natural sunlight and a cloth backdrop. Méliès himself played the man attempting to sleep.

Survival

A film commonly identified as A Terrible Night is known to survive and has appeared on various DVD collections. However, Méliès's great-great-granddaughter, Pauline Méliès, published findings in 2013 suggesting that the film commonly believed to be A Terrible Night is actually a later Méliès film, A Midnight Episode, numbered 190 in the Star Films catalogues, and that the original A Terrible Night—featuring simpler scenery and different camera placement, but the same plot and the same bed—survives in two print copies: a photocollage held by the Cinémathèque Française and a flipbook published by Lèon Beaulieu around the turn of the century. If this hypothesis is accurate, both A Terrible Night and A Midnight Episode survive.