Bob Kick, the Mischievous Kid
About Bob Kick, the Mischievous Kid
Georges Méliès plays Bob Kick, a grown man dressed as a toddler. Two nursemaids lead him in with a baby; a soldier turns up, and the women leave with him. Left alone, Bob drinks a bottle of wine. A woman's head appears on the table, turns into a monstrous face, and then into a body that pins him under the fallen table. A nursemaid brings a hoop, Bob jumps through it and vanishes, and the soldier, chasing the women, drops the baby and rolls over what turns out to be an empty blanket.
Cast & crew
More about Bob Kick, the Mischievous Kid
Méliès plays Bob Kick. Star Film sold the picture as catalog numbers 510–511. The French title is Bob Kick, l'enfant terrible.
Themes
In film history
It is one of the Méliès trick films in which the effects play on an image of female beauty that will not stay still.
Technique
The tricks are made with pyrotechnics, substitution splices, and multiple exposures.
Preservation
The Library of Congress holds two identical paper prints, one from the American release and one from the French release.
Notes
- A 1981 Centre national de la cinématographie guide says the ending its editors saw differed from the one John Frazer summarized in Artificially Arranged Scenes: The Films of Georges Méliès (1979).
- An American Star Film description of the period calls Bob a vaudeville comedian dressed as a baby, and has him drink champagne left on the table.
Scenes
- A woman's head on the table changes into a monstrous face, and the body that follows pins Bob under the table.
- Bob leaps through a hoop held by the nursemaids and is gone.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Bob Kick, l'enfant terrible (1903).webm)
- Library of Congress
