The Four Troublesome Heads
About The Four Troublesome Heads
A magician stands between two tables and lifts off his own head, which talks from the tabletop while a new head appears on his shoulders. He repeats the trick until four matching heads are visible at once. He plays a banjo, the heads sing, and he knocks two of them away with the instrument for singing badly. He throws his own head aside, tosses the last table head into the air, and it drops back onto his neck. He bows and leaves.
Cast & crew
More about The Four Troublesome Heads
Star Film number 167. Méliès plays the magician. The extra heads were made with substitution splices and four separate exposures against a black ground.
Themes
In film history
Detachable, singing heads became one of Méliès's recurring magic subjects after this short.
Making
Méliès timed the removals to his own mime, so the new head on the shoulders matches the head just set on the table.
Reviews
William B. Parrill, surveying silent films in the 2010s, called it the start of Méliès's comic line of detachable body parts and duplicated selves.
Technique
Substitution splices plus four exposures put four living heads in one frame.
Preservation
A print circulates, including the copy filed on Wikimedia Commons as Un homme de tête (1898).
Notes
- The French title is Un homme de têtes. English-language copies have also been called Four Heads Are Better Than One.
- In 1903 Siegmund Lubin issued an unauthorized American print under the title Four Heads Are Better Than One.
- It is the first Méliès film known to show a living head separated from the body, a trick he returned to later.
- The multiple exposure of objects on a black background is among the earliest uses of that device on film.
Scenes
- The magician smashes two singing heads with his banjo, then throws a head into the air and catches it on his neck.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Un homme de tête (1898).webm)
