Der Traum des Bildhauers (1907)
Article 5648 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-12-2019
Directed by Johann Schwarzer
Cast unknown
Country: Austria
What it is: Very early nudie

A sculptor creates three nude female statues, and then dreams they come to life.

When I stumbled across this one on IMDB, I found myself wondering who Johann Swartzer was and why I hadn’t heard of him. I quickly figured out why when I saw the short; it’s obvious that fantastic cinema wasn’t his area of expertise, but the nudie film was. The three statues are naked women standing really still, and that’s the extent of the special effects. Despite the nudity, this short is singularly dull; you know the statues are going to come to life and start moving, but it takes too much time getting around to this moment. Let’s face it; four minutes is a bit too long for the story here (or lack of it); it could have easily been reduced to a minute or less.