Watch The Black Imp For Free

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Brilliant and touching

As Good As It Gets

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

The black imp in the title is almost Satanic. He inhabits a room that is rented out to people. He is a menace. A poor guy gets the room and tries to put his coat in a dresser, but the dresser keeps moving around. At one point it goes up and up and then disappears. The best sequence in the film is one where the guy first causes several chairs to appear and then tries to get rid of them. Every time he throws one aside, another one takes its place. The whole thing ends disastrously for the guy. The special effects are really wonderful.

The jump cut was the key element in early movie conjurer Georges Melies bag of tricks, and as he grew more experienced in the production of films so his use of this trick grew more sophisticated. This ingenious little movie shows off Melies' adeptness to good effect, and it's clear that a lot of imagination has been used in a simple tale.A mischievous devil appears in a hotel room and is just preparing for a snooze when a traveller enters the room. Angered by this intrusion the devil plays a series of tricks on the traveller (who is played by Melies) until he drives him to near madness so that he has to be escorted from the room by hotel staff.The use of the jump cut is used to good effect here, and they are particularly effective thanks to their unusual seamlessness. Usually in these early films it's easy to see where the cut has taken place. In this film, even though our knowledge of the technique means we know the exact moment when it has been used, very often here we can't actually see the cut. Definitely one of Melies' better films.

This is one of the very best of Georges Melies's many 'trick' films. Interestingly, the English-language prints of this film render its title as 'The Black Imp' rather than the more accurate 'The Black Devil' ... probably because English-language audiences would interpret the word 'devil' to mean THE Devil, and presumably His Satanic Majesty has got more important things to do than just fool about with furniture.The major item in Melies's cinematic bag of tricks was the jump cut -- in which the camera's motion is stopped while an object or person is moved to a new position, then the camera is restarted -- so that something or somebody suddenly appears, disappears, changes position, or switches place with something else. More than fifty years after Melies, this same camera trick was still being used in such sophisticated fare as 'Bewitched' and 'Lost in Space'. One problem with the jump cut is that the actors on screen who aren't part of the transformation often have difficulty staying absolutely motionless during the transition ... so, the effect of the jump cut is often diluted because somebody who wasn't supposed to move has unintentionally 'jumped' to another position, impairing the illusion. This happened far too often in Melies's films. Even if all the actors behave themselves, there's often a shift in the lighting or some other unintended change which calls attention to the jump in the film.SLIGHT SPOILERS. One reason why 'The Black Devil' delights me is because the jump cuts are unusually seamless. There are none of those lurching transitions which ruin so many jump cuts. Also, Melies has used the gimmick much more imaginatively here than in several of his other films. It's simple enough to use the jump cut to make one object appear, disappear or move by itself. In 'The Black Devil', very amusingly, Melies uses camera sorcery to make a long series of identical chairs appear in rapid-fire succession from the same point in midair. Unexpected and hilarious!I was especially impressed by one particular jump cut, due to the physical difficulties for the actor involved. We see a bearded man attempt to put his coat in a drawer while the Black Devil keeps magically rearranging the furniture. At one point, the bureau materialises on top of the table, forcing the poor bearded bloke to climb onto the table to open a bureau drawer. Instantly, the bureau and the table both move to other locations ... leaving the man in midair for just a fraction of an instant before gravity claims him.Now, think about what was involved in that shot. In order to get the effect, the actor had to suspend himself several feet above the floor while the camera operator checked his lighting, and so forth. The man must remain suspended until the camera starts, then he must fall immediately. If he dangles in midair for even a second, we'll have time to see how the trick is done. Thanks to the miracle of Rewind, I was able to replay this section of the film several times, until at last I saw how the actor was able to keep himself suspended till the crucial moment.Elsewhere in this same short film, we see part of the scenery put on fire, deliberately. I was quite surprised by this, as stage sets (and inexpensive film sets) are often highly flammable, and an intentional flame can rapidly get out of control. But Melies shows a sure hand here, and nothing happens which isn't in the script.Although Georges Melies's films are typically charming and funny, modern viewers will often easily spot the joins and junctures where his stage tricks are trundled into place. 'The Black Devil', refreshingly, is a seamless piece of screen magic, and it's still quite funny after all these years. My rating: 10 out of 10.

Méliès fans, I salute thee, this movie is, what I consider, the granddaddy of horror movies. The filming method is very conform to Méliès style, but the narrative (which everybody knows is a pretext for the magic tricks) is slightly different. The usual fantastic aspect leaves place for a paranoia induced story about a man tormented by a black imp, pulling some evil tricks on him, screwing up with his perception. Multiplication of chairs, furniture mysteriously changing place around the room...the poor man dosen't know what's going on until he finds out about the imp. Ensues a great fight between the man (armed with his broom) and the imp, which is continuing to use his mystical powers to mess around with the sleeper.Very good movie for those interested in the genesis of horror films.