The Magic Table
About The Magic Table
A young couple and a maid sit down to dinner in a modest room. The table legs shoot up, and the couple climb onto the chairs to reach the food. The table vanishes, reappears across the room, and leads them in a chase. It disappears again, and a giant bottle of Scotch stands in its place.
Cast & crew
More about The Magic Table
Catalogues long called this Segundo de Chomón's 1905 Pathé short La table magique. Robert J. Kiss identified the circulating print as Georges Méliès's Star-Film no. 171, La salle à manger fantastique, released in the United States by Selig as Dinner Under Difficulties. GRIMH dates no. 171 to 1900 and gives 20 meters.
Themes
Making
The longer Méliès print is on disc 3 of the StudioCanal set Georges Méliès: À la conquête du cinématographe.
Technique
Stop-substitution grows the table, moves it across the room, and drops it through a trap in the floor.
Preservation
The Cinémathèque Française holds the 59-second print identified as Star-Film no. 171. The Filmoteca Española fragment runs about 48 seconds.
Notes
- Juan-Gabriel Tharrats, in Segundo de Chomón: un pionnier méconnu du cinéma européen (2009), doubted a Pathé origin because the Filmoteca Española nitrate has no Pathé edge codes.
- Kiss matched the Filmoteca fragment, about 48 seconds, to a 59-second print at the Cinémathèque Française.
- The archival title began in Spain as La mesa encantada and was translated as La table magique in the 1950s.
- Pathé's numbered catalogue has no release under that title.
Scenes
- The table legs stretch and the couple climbs the chairs.
- A giant bottle of Scotch replaces the table.
Also available
- StudioCanal DVD Georges Méliès: À la conquête du cinématographe (disc 3)
- Internet Archive (LaTableMagique)
