LA LEGENDE DU FANTOME (1908)
aka Legend of a Ghost
Article 3396 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-20-2010
Posting Date: 12-1-2010
Directed by Segundo de Chomon
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Early epic fantasy

A woman encounters a ghost who sends her on a mission to battle demons.

It looks like we’re going to have a short Chomon-a-thon here; I’ve acquired a collection of shorts from early silent fantasist Segundo de Chomon, and some of them are on my hunt list. I suspect that this one, like many of Melies’s films, came with narration; at least, I found the sequence of events highly confusing in my viewing. In many ways, it doesn’t matter; Chomon uses many of the same techniques that were used by Melies, but he has his own approach, and much of the imagery in this one is very striking indeed; I especially like the scenes where the demons tool around in a demonmobile. Chomon doesn’t seem quite as stagebound as Melies was, and on occasion it looks like he shot some scenes out of doors. It’s beginning to look like Chomon may be the most striking early director of fantastic genre features next to Melies, and I look forward to seeing some more of his work.