The Cook in Trouble
About The Cook in Trouble
In a kitchen with a range, a staircase, and a flour box, two assistants and a scullery maid prepare vegetables while the chef tends the fire. A beggar turns out to be an enchanter and puts a spell on the room. Imps chase the staff through the window, the oven, the pots, and the coal box. The stove pipe falls on the chef, the imps throw him head first into the pot, and his assistants pull out only his torn clothes.
Cast & crew
More about The Cook in Trouble
Georges Méliès directed and plays the cook. The French title is Sorcellerie culinaire. Star Film numbered it 585–588. In the United States it was The Cook in Trouble; in Britain, Cookery Bewitched. It was copyrighted in the United States on May 9, 1904. The length on record is 275 feet. Effects include pyrotechnics and substitution splices.
Themes
Reviews
John Frazer, in his 1979 book Artificially Arranged Scenes, called the plot largely irrelevant beside the choreographed movement and set the film next to Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi.
Technique
The gags are made with pyrotechnics and substitution splices, and with trapdoors built into the kitchen set.
Preservation
The Library of Congress holds a 35mm paper print. The American catalogue ending, in which the cook's clothes are taken out of the pot, is missing from the surviving copy.
Notes
- Charles Urban's catalogue, aimed at British exhibitors, called the film acrobatic.
- The chase uses kitchen openings as trapdoors: a window, an oven door, a pot, and a drawer.
- John Frazer compared the short with Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi and wrote that the plot is buried under the acrobatics.
Scenes
- The imps throw the chef head first into the cooking pot, and the assistants haul out only his clothes.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Sorcellerie culinaire (1904).webm)
- Internet Archive (SorcellerieCulinaire)
- Library of Congress (paper print)
