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the audience applauded

That was an excellent one.

Just perfect...

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Before I read the reviews on IMDb for this film, I was still wondering "How'd they pull this off?" But now it all makes sense: the acrobats are lying on the floor, and the camera is pointed down towards them. It looks so realistic that some people I know actually thought it was real! I was starting to believe them, but then read the reviews, and it turns out I was right. Believe me, people can't balance up in the air like that.That said, this film is very well done anyways. It features some "acrobats" doing remarkable feats. In fact, this reminds me of a film I've seen by Georges Melies, called "An Impossible Balancing Feat" in which a similar stunt is performed. This one is truly remarkable, due to its excellent hand-color. At only three minutes long it's fun and excellent for 1907. On a side note, Melies had used the same trick 5 years earlier in 1902's "The Human Fly" which was meant to actually make the audience believe a man could walk on the walls rather than perform amazing stunts.

Yes, already over a hundred years ago people very pretty elastic already it seems. The director here is Segundo de Chomón, one of the most influential silent filmmakers, maybe number 2 behind Méliès. Basically we watch a group of Japanese artists/athletes perform for 3 minutes. On the Youtube version I watched there is some Asian music played at the same time which makes this even more fun to watch. Of course, originally its is a silent film. The highlight here are certainly the colors, not only the ones of the people but also for example the flowers in the top corners. It all had an aura of lotus blossom to it. I guess it was not as common back in the early 20th century to go to the circus, so thumbs up for the filmmaker bringing the show to the masses with the help of this new medium film. Then again, it was not completely new in 1907, but still fairly new. For de Chomòn it's one of his more known films and he made this one basically in the middle of his career. He was really prolific between 1902 and 1913 and made over 200 films in that period. The key to enjoying this one here is to keep in mind when it was made. If it had been done today, I would probably only give it 4 stars max, but taking the year into consideration I will be a bit more generous.

This film, "Kiri-Kis", by Segundo de Chomón, was included in the three DVD set "Saved From the Flames"--a collection of mostly ephemeral movies that have managed to avoid turning to powder, catching fire or melting--something that usually happened with the nitrate film stock used up through the 1950s.Unlike most of the other 54 films from the set, this one is actually a fragment--or at least it was. I was impressed by the conservators that took a fragment of the original hand-colored film and re-created the entire film by using a black & white copy and coloring to match the original fragment! Bless these folks for going to all this trouble! The film consists of French folks dressed up as Japanese acrobats--complete with skin-wigs and a Japanese topknot hairstyle. When they appear on stage, they do lots of impossible acrobatics--all apparently done by actually filming the actors on their backs and the camera suspended above them! This is amazing film work for 1907 and it is well worth your time.

I viewed a print of this short movie courtesy of Lobster Films, Paris. Here we have a French 'trick' film by the Pathe Brothers, from the same period in which Georges Melies was making his very popular trick movies. However, in Melies's films the trickery was accomplished by jump cuts, and spectacle was provided by elaborate sets and audacious story lines. In 'The Kiriki, Japanese Acrobats', we have a fairly straightforward acrobatic performance, abetted by some trickery that is far simpler than Melies's box of tricks, yet no less satisfying.We see some men, women and children in gymnastic clothing, clearly Caucasian yet made up to look vaguely Oriental, with ridiculously built-up foreheads covered by ludicrous hairstyles. The women creep back and forth in that ridiculous shuffling gait (move the feet very quickly but in very tiny steps) that western performers affect to simulate Orientals. I realise that, in the first decade of the twentieth century, the most proficient acrobatic troupes were nearly all Japanese ... but frankly, this ying-tong Japanoiserie did absolutely nothing to add to the proceedings, and should have been dispensed with.In small groups, the troupe rapidly execute a series of acrobatic manoeuvres which are so dazzling that they seem nearly superhuman. There is, of course, a trick: a deceptively simple one, yet done so skilfully that some viewers may have difficulty figuring it out.TRICK EXPLAINED NOW. Except for some 'book-end' footage at the beginning and the end, which is shot conventionally, the entire movie is filmed with an overhead camera shooting STRAIGHT DOWN onto a black velvet dropcloth surrounded by four upright walls. The actors, lying on this surface, affect postures to indicate that they are standing upright, with one of the walls being treated as a horizontal floor. When the tumblers move 'upwards', supposedly defying gravity, they are in fact merely moving horizontally, away from the wall representing the 'floor' and towards the opposite wall representing the 'ceiling'. The lighting, from directly above, eliminates side shadows and makes the trickery less obvious.The trick is made more difficult to spot because the stunts are done quickly and proficiently, and the performers demonstrate some genuine agility. To call this a 'trick' film is slightly demeaning to their efforts, since there is some genuine acrobatic work going on here: just not in the direction that it seems to be.I was amused and impressed by this movie, but I would have enjoyed it far more without the utterly unnecessary racial stereotyping. My rating for this one: 6 out of 10.