Rogues' Tricks
About Rogues' Tricks
Two vagrants smash a window of a furnished house and hide in a closet as the bearded owner, played by Georges Méliès, scolds the housemaid and a glazier arrives. They slip into an empty bathtub and pull the wooden cover over themselves. The owner lights the water heater, boiling water pours in, and when he sits on the lid they heave him into the tub. The chase ends in the closet: he collides with the glazier, fires a rifle that hits the maid, and the closet topples with him inside.
Cast & crew
More about Rogues' Tricks
Star Film catalogue number 909–911. Méliès plays the house owner, one of the rare parts in which he is the victim of the gag rather than the magician running it. Apart from a little pyrotechnics, the picture uses only two substitution splices.
Themes
Background
By 1907 Méliès was still releasing through his own Star Film company, and this short is a domestic chase comedy instead of a féerie.
Making
Méliès staged the rooms as a single theatrical set and cut with two substitution splices rather than a string of camera tricks.
Preservation
A print survives. David Shepard supervised a restoration released on home video in 2008.
Notes
- The French title is La Douche d'eau bouillante. In Britain the film was sold as The Burglar's Bath.
- The American title Rogues' Tricks is the wording on a surviving print's title card.
- A 2008 restoration supervised by David Shepard was issued on home video with a Photoplayer accompaniment by Joe Rinaudo.
- The glazier's sheets of glass shatter when the owner runs into him during the chase.
Scenes
- The two men jump in the empty tub and yank the cover down as the owner comes in to bathe.
- He sits on the lid, they shove him into the water, and the closet later falls with him shut inside.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (La Douche d'eau bouillante (1907).webm)
