Watch Naval Combat in Greece For Free

You won't be disappointed!

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The Greco-Turkish War, which occurred the same year Melies shot this very brief film, was a big event. Although no naval clashes occurred in reality, the combat that takes place in this short is meant to be a reconstructed newsreel of an event from the war. While it is not nearly as impressive as Melies's other two war films, "La Prise de Tournavos" and "Les Dernieres Cartouches" in terms of realism, it's still pretty interesting in its own way. A captain (Melies himself) and four sailors on board of a ship fight off the enemy when one of them is hit by a bomb.While in 1897 this is as good as films got, it is easy to see now that this is not a real live filmed event. The set for the boat is very fake-looking now, obviously being a painted piece of card-board rocking back and forth against a backdrop (courtesy of the rocking platform Melies built which he later used for "Between Calais and Dover" the same year). It does, however, have a certain artistic merit on its own level. Nothing of what happens on the boat is particularly interesting, so the cool set and movement of the ship are probably the main reasons to watch it now.

This time Melies takes us on board a ship for combat. There is a good deal of firing of cannons. The problem is that if this were a true warship, the sailors couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. The boat is never even remotely steady. Standing up is the real challenge. Still, it works OK for the entire minute we watch. Apparently, the theme of combat was in Melies' mind a good deal.

This is a very quaint film from Georges Méliès. Seen today, you'll probably laugh at how antiquated it looks. However, keep in mind that this film is still way ahead of the norm for the era, as back in the late 1890s, most films were amazingly mundane--such as showing trains arriving at stations and people playing cards.The film is a recreation of a scene from a naval battle off the Greek coast. The boats and backgrounds are clearly painted but what struck me was how the boat rocked. Heck, if it was in a hurricane it never would have rocked THIS fast! Obviously folks were off camera rocking the set up and down--but they did it so quickly you can't help but laugh. But, with a decent set, nice explosions and a decent style, it's still an intriguing look into the early work of this brilliant director.

This early Georges Melies film in a reenactment of events during naval combat in Greece: sailors come out of the hold and work the guns against enemy forces. By no means a particularly excellent piece, it can best be appreciated in the context of its own period: Melies sets the ship rocking back and forth against the background -- it seems to have been placed on rockers -- in what was, for the time, an unprecedented technique -- which is fairly typical for Melies, who worked as hard at his film illusions as he had on his stage illusions when he was a practicing magician.For those who wish to see this piece with their own eyes, it can be found on the European Archives site.