An Improvised Fireworks Display
About An Improvised Fireworks Display
A ragged drunk staggers down a street in front of a fireworks shop, makes a pass at a passerby, and collapses. Boys break into the shop, ring him with fireworks, and light them. He wakes, runs through the bursts, and vanishes in a cloud of smoke. The boys laugh.
Cast & crew
More about An Improvised Fireworks Display
Georges Méliès made this Star Film comedy, catalogue numbers 753–755. The French title is Un feu d'artifice improvisé. He plays the drunk. Wikipedia says production started after his son André, then four, described a dream in which jokers surrounded a sleeping drunk with fireworks. Effects are pyrotechnics and substitution splices. The Wikipedia duration line reads 3 minutes. Wikidata lists 4 minutes.
Themes
Making
Méliès staged his son's dream in the usual Star Film street set and played the victim himself.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
A print survives and is on Wikimedia Commons. Published timings differ: 3 minutes on Wikipedia, 4 on Wikidata.
Notes
- André Méliès was four when he told his father the dream that became the scene.
- The drunk disappears on a substitution splice inside the smoke.
- A lamppost from this set was reused the next year in A Mix-up in the Gallery.
- Wikidata's 4-minute timing does not match the 3-minute duration on the English Wikipedia page.
Scenes
- The drunk collapses in front of the shop.
- Boys pack fireworks around his body and light them.
- He disappears in a burst of smoke.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Un feu d'artifice improvisé (1905).webm)
