THE KNIGHT OF THE SNOWS (1912)
aka Le Chevalier des neiges
Article 2635 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-22-2008
Posting Date: 10-30-2008
Directed by Georges Melies
Cast unknown
Country: France

Two men vie for the hand of a princess. The evil one conjures forth demons to help him kidnap her, and the good one calls on angels to help rescue her.

There’s not a whole lot of difference between the movies Georges Melies made for his own production company and those like this he made for Pathe in the latter part of his career. Still, having watched this one just a few days after having watched ATLANTIS (which was made one year later), I can’t help but feel just how old-fashioned his fare must have seemed at this point; there isn’t really any change of style here from when he made A TRIP TO THE MOON a decade earlier. Still, if you’re a Melies fan, this has its good moments; the sequence where the evil man conjures forth the devils is a fairly fun sequence, especially when we see that beastie the devil uses to pull his sleigh; it looks like a cross between the Jabberwock and that creature Daffy Duck turns into in DUCK AMUCK. It’s your basic fairy tale sifted through Melies’s cinematic sensibility.