The Taximeter Cab
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A fare effort
I saw (but didn't hear) this very early English musical film (with its credits missing) in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile, Italy. Aye, a production company in England was making MUSICAL films in 1909! The Warwick Trading Company released silent films with musical phonograph discs, which the projectionist was meant to play in synch with the images on screen. Since the characters on screen were moving in time to the music, it did no harm if the phonograph started a bar behind or after the movie ... so long as the phonograph and the projector both kept their proper running speeds. (Or, in the case of this particular movie, its taxi metre. Boom, boom!)
This is a 'trick' film, similar to the better-known French efforts of Georges Melies. A London cabbie falls asleep in his taxi. He is knocked up by an elaborately-dressed man, whose baggage labels proclaim that he is A. Presto, Conjuror. (An obvious pun on 'Hey Presto!'.) The cabbie takes the magician to his destination. But, when Presto disembarks, a vast contingent of other characters get out with him ... courtesy of his magic bag. It then turns out that the cabbie was merely dreaming.
It's a shame that, as late as 1909, these English film-makers felt a need to 'explain' the magical events in their movie by having them turn out to be a dream. Melies was pulling off more elaborate events in his movies ten years earlier, and felt no need to explain them: they were clearly magic for the sake of magic! And, indeed, Melies's trick films of circa 1903 are more impressive than this well-meaning but half-hearted English effort from 1909. My rating: just 6 out of 10. Taxi!
This is a 'trick' film, similar to the better-known French efforts of Georges Melies. A London cabbie falls asleep in his taxi. He is knocked up by an elaborately-dressed man, whose baggage labels proclaim that he is A. Presto, Conjuror. (An obvious pun on 'Hey Presto!'.) The cabbie takes the magician to his destination. But, when Presto disembarks, a vast contingent of other characters get out with him ... courtesy of his magic bag. It then turns out that the cabbie was merely dreaming.
It's a shame that, as late as 1909, these English film-makers felt a need to 'explain' the magical events in their movie by having them turn out to be a dream. Melies was pulling off more elaborate events in his movies ten years earlier, and felt no need to explain them: they were clearly magic for the sake of magic! And, indeed, Melies's trick films of circa 1903 are more impressive than this well-meaning but half-hearted English effort from 1909. My rating: just 6 out of 10. Taxi!
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- F Gwynplaine MacIntyre
- Jul 28, 2007
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- 1.33 : 1
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