DELIRIUM IN A STUDIO (1907)
aka Ali Barbouyou et Ali Bouf a l’huile
Article 4067 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-31-2012
Directed by Georges Melies
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Comic trick short

An assistant to a painter drinks some varnish by mistake and hallucinates that his master’s painting comes to life.

For the record, only a two minute fragment of this Melies short still exists, but it looks to be the last two minutes of the short, and it opens with a short intro explaining the opening action. I’d say the remaining footage is the main part of the short; we see the woman in the painting moving around before she settles back into the painting, and we see the horrible revenge that the painter exacts on his assistant. Eventually, the shot moves from fantasy into horror territory involving a decapitated man rising from the dead and carrying his head around. What’s left of this one is fairly amusing.