''The Scheming Gambler's Paradise'' (french: Le Tripot clandestin) is a 1905 French

short Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known as ...

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...

Georges Méliès Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès (; ; 8 December 1861 – 21 January 1938) was a French illusionist, actor, and film director. He led many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. Méliès was well known for the use of ...

. It was sold by Méliès's

Star Film Company The Manufacture de films pour cinématographes, often known as Star Film, was a French film production company run by the illusionist and film director Georges Méliès. History On 28 December 1895, Méliès attended the celebrated first publi ...

and is numbered 784–785 in its catalogues.

Plot

In an opulent room, a crowd of people are playing at a gambling table. Suddenly a servant rushes in to warn them that the police are about to raid their

gambling den Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three eleme ...

. In a few moments, in a flurry of moving panels, the gamblers disguise the whole room as a

millinery Hat-making or millinery is the design, manufacture and sale of hats and other headwear. A person engaged in this trade is called a milliner or hatter. Historically, milliners, typically women shopkeepers, produced or imported an inventory of g ...

, with the women posing as hat makers and the men hiding just outside. The raiding police come in, are astonished to find no gambling den, and apologize profusely for disturbing the "milliners". As soon as the police leave, the room is changed back into a gambling den and the games resume. All is going well when the servant rushes in to announce a much bigger raid. This time there is no time to transform the room, so the gamblers simply rush out, leaving one of them to turn out the light in the chandelier. He drops on the floor to hide, and a crowd of policemen and soldiers hurry into the darkened room, most of them tripping over the gambler before he can rush out. The policemen and soldiers, tumbling over each other on the floor, untangle themselves when their leader lights the chandelier. After stern instructions from their leader, the whole force rushes to the gambling table and begins their own chaotic game. Hidden behind the room's trick panels, the scheming gamblers watch the policemen enjoy themselves.

Production

The film is marked by a

subversive Subversion () refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to transform the established social order and its structures of power, authority, hierarchy, and social norms. Sub ...

touch, with the characters who represent order themselves giving into chaos. The room transformation is done with

stage machinery Stage machinery, also known as stage mechanics, comprises the mechanical devices used to create special effects in theatrical productions. See also * Scenic design Scenic design (also known as scenography, stage design, or set design) is the ...

, augmented by

substitution splice The substitution splice or stop trick is a cinematic special effect in which filmmakers achieve an appearance, disappearance, or transformation by altering one or more selected aspects of the mise-en-scène between two shots while maintaining th ...

s; the effect of turning the chandelier off and on was worked using shutters, which blocked light from coming through the studio's glass roof. A print of the film survives, although some footage is missing at the end.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Scheming Gambler's Paradise French black-and-white films Films directed by Georges Méliès French silent short films