The Fairy of the Black Rocks (1907)
aka La fee des roches noires
Article 5647 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-11-2019
Directed by Segundo de Chomon
Featuring Julienne Mathieu
Country: France
What it is: Comic supernatural revenge

A ne’er-do-well (and yes, I love using antiquated terms like this) refuses to help an old woman with a bundle of sticks, unaware that she is actually a fairy capable of supernatural revenge.

Segundo de Chomon is my second favorite fantasist of the very early years of cinema. Though he obviously owed a great debt to the innovations of Melies, he was able to give his work an extra dose of surreal imagery that sets him apart. This is one of his works that most resembles Melies; the various visual tricks certainly recall similar moments from Melies, but the comic sense of this one is Chomon’s own touch. It’s also short and to the point at a time when Melies’s work was trying (not very successfully) to stretch out into longer works. This one is solid and entertaining.