''The Haunted Hotel '' is a 1907 American silent short

comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the old ...

written, produced, and directed by J. Stuart Blackton. One of the oldest surviving

animated films Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anim ...

, it combines

live action Live action (or live-action) is a form of cinematography or videography that uses photography instead of animation. Some works combine live-action with animation to create a live-action animated film. Live-action is used to define film, video g ...

and

stop motion Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames ...

to animate objects.

Plot

The film starts with an outside view of a small house, obviously a model. The windows and door start moving and the house take the shape of a face. A traveller enters the hotel and things start to move by themselves. A waiter brings the dinner and, on the table, the bread is cut by a knife moving by itself and coffee and sugar are served without human intervention. A small figure comes out of the milk jug to pour the milk in the cup before returning to the jug. The flabbergasted guest brings out of the jug a napkin which starts dancing by itself and, when he finally catches it, it turns into a sheet. The man finally goes to bed. The room starts turning around. The film ends with a big monster appearing behind the bed and catching into his huge hands the traveler and his blanket.

Cast

Paul Panzer Paul Wolfgang Panzerbeiter (November 3, 1872 – August 16, 1958), known professionally as Paul Panzer, was a German-American silent film actor. He appeared in more than 330 films between 1905 and 1952. Biography Panzer was born in Würzburg. ...

as The Traveller
William V. Ranous as The Waiter

Production and reception

For the production of ''The Haunted Hotel'', he combined various tricks such as double exposure or objects hanging from wires with the stop-motion process. Vitagraph advertised the film as "Impressive, indefinable, insoluble, positively the most marvelous film ever invented." The film became such a hit in Europe and in the United States that it gained "a reputation as the first animated picture (...) and the most popular up to that point". The film became the best-selling American film in France and in all of Europe over 150 prints were delivered. Public response in Paris, where Vitagraph had recently opened an office, "was so strong that all the French producers racked their brains trying to figure out the tricks that made objects move by themselves. After considerable difficulty the secret was discovered and the history of cartoons could begin".''Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898-1928'', p.15. Donald Crafton. The University o Chicago. 1993. . Blackton would continue the use of stop motion in ''

The Humpty Dumpty Circus ''The Humpty Dumpty Circus'' is a lost short stop-motion film directed by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith, the Anglo-American founders of Vitagraph Studios. There are no known surviving copies. Albert E. Smith claimed in his 1952 book '' ...

'' (1908) and several other short films.

References

External links

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''The Haunted Hotel''
a
A Cinema History
{{DEFAULTSORT:Haunted Hotel, The 1900s animated short films 1907 films American animated short films Films directed by J. Stuart Blackton Films set in hotels Haunted hotels Vitagraph Studios short films American silent short films American black-and-white films 1900s American films