''Le Déshabillage impossible'', released in the United States as ''Going to Bed Under Difficulties'' and in the United Kingdom as ''An Increasing Wardrobe'', is a 1900 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 comedy
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term o ...
trick film, 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 ...
. In the film, a man attempts to undress so he can go to sleep.
Plot
A man in a hotel room wants to sleep for the night. He takes off his suit (placing it on a clothing rack) and his trousers (placing them on a chair), but then finds himself wearing a coat and hat that have appeared magically. The man removes them, but a new hat and a plaid pair of trousers appear in their places. He removes these clothes as well; this process repeats, with the man undoing each addition of clothing with more and more agitation.
The end of the film is
lost
Lost may refer to getting lost, or to:
Geography
*Lost, Aberdeenshire, a hamlet in Scotland
* Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, or LOST, a hiking and cycling trail in Florida, US
History
*Abbreviation of lost work, any work which is known to have bee ...
; according to a contemporary catalogue description, the man's attempt to undress ends with him rolling about on the floor and on the bed, and finally collapsing in an
epileptic seizure.
Production and release
Méliès plays the man in the film. An editing effect called the
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 ...
was used for the magically appearing clothes.
An American catalogue mentions that the end of the film also uses
fast motion
Time-lapse photography is a technique in which the frequency at which film frames are captured (the frame rate) is much lower than the frequency used to view the sequence. When played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus ...
photography as a special effect; if so, it is the only known Méliès film to do so. (It is difficult to verify whether fast motion was used at the end, since the last few seconds appear to be missing from the surviving print.)
[
The film 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 publi ...
and numbered 312–313 in its catalogues.
Historical significance
''Going to Bed Under Difficulties'' marks the second use of the sight gag by Méliès in which a character, trying to undress, is foiled by magically appearing clothes; the first being ''Up-To-Date Spiritualism'' (1900). The gag was frequently recycled by rival studios over the following few years in a series of close imitations of the Méliès film, with titles such as ''Undressing Impossible'' (1901), ''Clothes Enchanted'' (1901), ''Undressing Extraordinary'' (1901), and ''The Inexhaustible Wardrobe'' (1902).The Bewitched Inn
''The Bewitched Inn'' (French: ''L'auberge ensorcelée'') is an 1897 French short silent trick film directed by Georges Méliès. It was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 122–123 in its catalogs.
Plot
A traveler arrive ...
.''[ The film historian Paolo Cherchi Usai notes that the film evokes the concept of a ]split personality
Dissociative identity disorder (DID), better known as multiple personality disorder or multiple personality syndrome, is a mental disorder characterized by the presence of at least two distinct and relatively enduring personality states.
The di ...
, a constantly recurring theme in Méliès's work:
See also
* 1900 in science fiction
References
External links
*
{{Georges Méliès
Films directed by Georges Méliès
French silent short films
French black-and-white films
French comedy short films
1900 comedy films
1900 films
1900 short films
Silent French comedy films
Trick films