Palace Of The Arabian Nights, The (1905)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
aka Le Palais des mille et une nuits
A 20-minute epic from Melies tells the typical story of a princess who wants to marry the young man she loves but her father refuses. The boy is visited by some sort of spirit who sends him on a quest and if he can overcome everything that will be thrown at him then the boy will receive riches. This isn't your typical Melies film from this period as this here runs ten-times longer than the normal films he was producing. With that said, even though a narration track was added for this film, I still found it rather confusing and in the end it might look good but it's not nearly entertaining enough. I think everyone knows the story here but there's way too much time spent on scenes that amount to nothing including one with some dancing girls. There's some minimum action including a nice sequence where the man must battle some skeletons followed by a fire breathing dragon. This stuff here was quite good and the film needed more stuff like this but we're often left with scenes of the boy just wondering around. The film was in black and white but many of the scenes were hand-tinted and for the most part it looked excellent.
** 1/2 (out of 4)
aka Le Palais des mille et une nuits
A 20-minute epic from Melies tells the typical story of a princess who wants to marry the young man she loves but her father refuses. The boy is visited by some sort of spirit who sends him on a quest and if he can overcome everything that will be thrown at him then the boy will receive riches. This isn't your typical Melies film from this period as this here runs ten-times longer than the normal films he was producing. With that said, even though a narration track was added for this film, I still found it rather confusing and in the end it might look good but it's not nearly entertaining enough. I think everyone knows the story here but there's way too much time spent on scenes that amount to nothing including one with some dancing girls. There's some minimum action including a nice sequence where the man must battle some skeletons followed by a fire breathing dragon. This stuff here was quite good and the film needed more stuff like this but we're often left with scenes of the boy just wondering around. The film was in black and white but many of the scenes were hand-tinted and for the most part it looked excellent.