Undressing Extraordinary
“Here we present a picture that simply convulses an audience with laughter.”
About Undressing Extraordinary
A tired traveller comes into a hotel bedroom, stretches, and starts to undress. Coat and waistcoat come off, and a continental uniform is suddenly on him. He throws that off and a policeman’s uniform takes its place, then a soldier’s. He makes for the bed and finds a skeleton on the pillow. The bed vanishes. He is left on the floor while bedclothes pour down from the ceiling.
Cast & crew
More about Undressing Extraordinary
Walter R. Booth directed the trick short for Robert W. Paul in 1901. It runs 3 minutes 10 seconds. It is a remake of Georges Méliès’s 1900 film Le Déshabillage impossible, which ran about two minutes. An Edison catalog wrote up the same bedroom routine. Another title is The Troubles of a Tired Traveller. Booth is the only name on the cast list.
Themes
Making
Booth copies Méliès’s impossible undressing and adds the skeleton on the pillow. Each new costume is a stopped camera, not a quick change done in view.
Reviews
Michael Brooke, writing for BFI Screenonline, points to the clothes and furniture that will not obey the man, and notes that the film has been cited as an early horror short because the simple task never finishes.
Look
The bedroom is one set. Substitutions put the uniforms on the traveller and later remove the bed from under him.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
A print of about three minutes survives and is on BFI Player.
Notes
- The precise timing given for the Paul short is 3 minutes 10 seconds.
- Méliès’s original is the two-minute Le Déshabillage impossible (1900).
- The costume changes are stop-camera substitutions: uniform, policeman, soldier.
- The Edison catalog ends the description with the skeleton, the vanished bed, and the rain of bedclothes.
- BFI Player carries it under the longer title.
Scenes
- A continental uniform appears the moment the coat comes off.
- Policeman, then soldier, replace it.
- A skeleton is already on the pillow.
- The bed disappears and linen falls from the ceiling.
Influenced by
- Le Déshabillage impossible (Georges Méliès, 1900)
Also available
- BFI Player
- Wikimedia Commons (Undressing Extraordinary (1901) - yt.webm)
