''A Nightmare'' (French: ''Le cauchemar'') is a short silent

trick film In the early history of cinema, trick films were short silent films designed to feature innovative special effects. History The trick film genre was developed by Georges Méliès in some of his first cinematic experiments, and his works remain th ...

created and released in 1896 and directed by

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 released 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 public ...

and is numbered 82 in its catalogues, where it was advertised as a ''scène fantastique''. The film was shot outside in the garden of Méliès's property in

Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis Montreuil (), sometimes unofficially referred to as Montreuil-sous-Bois (), is a commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris in Seine-Saint-Denis. With a population of 109,914 as of 2018, Montreuil i ...

, with painted scenery. Méliès plays the sleeping man.

Synopsis

A man attempting tosses and turns in his sleep, has a nightmare. He is visited by various visions which transform into each other, including a girl clad only in a sheet, a

minstrel A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. It originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer ...

wearing

blackface Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by non-Black people to portray a caricature of a Black person. In the United States, the practice became common during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of racial stereo ...

Pierrot Pierrot ( , , ) is a stock character of pantomime and '' commedia dell'arte'', whose origins are in the late seventeenth-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne. The name is a diminutive of ''Pi ...

, and the

Man in the Moon In many cultures, several pareidolic images of a human face, head or body are recognized in the disc of the full moon; they are generally known as the Man in the Moon. The images are based on the appearance of the dark areas (known as lunar ma ...

, who gnaws on his arm. He wakes up tangled in his sheets. He is relieved that it was all just a dream.

References

External links

* * 1896 films French silent short films French black-and-white films Films directed by Georges Méliès Films about nightmares Films shot in France Blackface minstrel shows and films Moon in film 1896 short films Silent horror films 1890s French films {{1890s-France-film-stub