A Mix-Up in the Gallery
About A Mix-Up in the Gallery
A photographer wrecks his studio and sends a load of debris into the street below. Passersby catch the fallout. Méliès plays the photographer in a wig and a false beard. The French title, Une chute de cinq étages, names a five-story drop.
Cast & crew
More about A Mix-Up in the Gallery
Georges Méliès directed this Star Film comedy, numbers 789–790. Wikipedia gives the length as 55 meters and does not print a plot. Wikidata lists 3 minutes. Star Film deposited it at the Library of Congress for American copyright on February 21, 1906. That date is the copyright filing, not a documented premiere. The studio set copies a real photographer's gallery, including a shuttered glass ceiling of the kind Méliès had used in his own glass studio. Substitution splices are visible.
Themes
Making
The set is a painted backdrop plus a wooden flat. The glass-ceiling detail quotes Méliès's own studio architecture.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
Deposited at the Library of Congress for copyright on February 21, 1906. A moving-image copy is on Wikimedia Commons. Wikipedia records 55 meters. Wikidata records 3 minutes.
Notes
- The dancer statue had already appeared in The Ballet-Master's Dream (1904).
- The lamppost is the one from Unexpected Fireworks (1905).
- Wall posters name fake candidates: Claudel, Méliès's set painter; L. Micho, cameraman Michaut; and Salmon, a studio actor.
- When the prop camera will not fit through the window, Méliès, still in character, pushes it.
Scenes
- Debris from the gallery pours onto the street.
- Méliès shoves the prop camera through a window it will not clear.
- Campaign posters use the names of his painter, his cameraman, and an actor.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Une chute de cinq étages (1906).webm)
