A Hundred Tricks (1906) User Reviews

By My Count, Vingt-Neuf

[boblipton · 7/10 · 1 November 2016]

Even if there are only twenty-nine tricks in this trick film from Segundo de Chomon (I may have missed a few), they're pretty good.

Segundo de Chomon was the man whom Pathe Freres used to take Georges Melies' market from him. Melies was a stage magician who devised or learned camera tricks. De Chomon was a cameraman who knew all the camera tricks and hired magicians, dancers and whatever else he needed to outdo Melies. He hadn't done it by 1906, but he was catching up fast and within a couple of years would surpass him. By 1912, Melies gave up; the public was no longer interested in movies that were just about camera tricks; they wanted movies that told story and camera tricks were just a small part of the way they did so.

As a result, this movie doesn't look like one. It looks like a recording of a magic act, which is exactly what it is. It's also a very good one.

Another knock-off.

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 2 May 2021]

Director Georges Méliès had been a stage magician and used much of his magical training in his films. Many have him playing a stage magician doing all sorts of tricks. By stopping and re-starting the camera, he made things seem to appear, disappear or change. His films were popular and back in the day, other filmmakers just stole his ideas and made their own version of the stories. One of the most successful of these 'borrowers' was Segundo de Chomón, a Spanish filmmaker who specialized in making his own versions of many of the films of Méliès. It's a shame, as he was very talented...and when he wasn't ripping off the French filmmaker, Chomón's work is wonderful. Here in "Les Cent Trucs", however, he just imitates the Frenchman and little innovation occurs in the film.

Like many of his films, this one features a magician doing one trick after another after another with no real regard to any sort of story. You see the magician make clowns, a ballet dancer and a lady all appear and vanish and change. Nothing really more to it than that. A case of been there/done that...and it's hardly original in any way.