[14 Oct 2024: Since we originally wrote this entry six years ago, the release date of this short has been adjusted to 1906. Adjust the mathematics below accordingly.]
This month's short film is the
oldest one we have ever presented here at a
wasted life — it beats November 2015's The Mystery of the Leaping Fish
(USA,1916) by 8 years and February 2016's Un Chien Andalou
(France, 1929) by 21. We would be lying if we didn't say that The Haunted House looks its age but,
that said, we still find this super-early haunted house comedy as an amazing
piece of film history, one that can and should be appreciated as an early visual
and special effects treat. With perhaps a few too many pratfalls, but those were simplier days...
Though he has slowly gained
enough recognition to at least be given a commemorative postal stamp (way above) in his
homeland of Spain, the Spanish film pioneer Segundo Víctor Aurelio Chomón y
Ruiz, aka Segundo de Chomón (18 Oct 1871 – 2 May 1929), remains unjustly
forgotten elsewhere, if not in general. A former concessionary for Pathé in
Barcelona, de Chomón entered filmmaking after moving to Paris with his wife, the
even more-forgotten French silent film actress Julienne Mathieu (21 Dec 1987 –
1 Dec 1943), whom he eventually featured in at least 31 of his magical shorts —
including The Electric Hotel,
also from 1908, whence the GIF below comes. We don't think she's the female, however, found in The Haunted House. (Trivia: The Electric Hotel is also the only
film director Segundo de Chomón himself is known to have acted in — in the
movie, the man alongside his wife is he.)
De Chomón is arguably one of the
first truly great visual tricksters of film: "With his innovative use of
early splice-based tricks and a penchant for optical illusions he is often
compared to the slightly earlier Georges Méliès (8 Dec 1861 – 21 Jan 1938), and
indeed has been dubbed 'The Spanish Méliès' by some. Though the similarities
are clear, Chomón departs from Méliès in his variety of subjects and his use of
animation, an art form he played a key role in developing." [Public Domain Review]
De Chomón's output was primarily
short films, but as a cinematographer and/or tricks director he worked on an
occasional feature movie, including Giovanni Pastrone's epic Cabiria (1914 / full movie),
the film in which the popular character Maciste
makes his cinematic debut, and Abel Gance's Napoleon (1927 / trailer).
James Stuart Blackton (5 Jan 1875
– 13 Aug 1941) possibly invented stop motion, a technique he used as early as
1906 in his short Humorous Phases of
Funny Faces (1906 / short).
But as Animacam
points out, "It was Segundo de Chomón who perfected this technique, taking
it to lands already very similar to those of today."
Interestingly enough, Blackton
released a short called The Haunted
Hotel in 1907 (full short),
a film that bears so many resemblances to The
Haunted House that it could start an argument about the differences between
paying homage, borrowing, and cribbing. Regardless of where one stands on this
argument, The Haunted House, like so
many of de Chomón's short films, nevertheless reveals great visual talent,
innovative (if now primitive) use of technology, and an exploratory nature —
not to mention a truly amazing, surreal imagination.
Enjoy… and then check out his
other shorts: those that still exist are public domain.
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