This is the first known movie version of Miguel de Cervantes' great novel. For 1903 it's a major production. It's a full reel in length, it's extensively colored by, presumably, stencil coloring, and director Lucien Nonguet does a lot of split-screen work, with the romantic phantasms that crowd his hero's brain prancing like a living frieze on the wall of his library, the puppets in a show in a small area, and in the scene where he gets dumped in the bro, the people controlling the dam in a little box in the upper right corner.
It doesn't look like modern film grammar, and that's because it wasn't. It looked back -- or given the date, sideways -- to the related technology of magic lanterns
It doesn't look like modern film grammar, and that's because it wasn't. It looked back -- or given the date, sideways -- to the related technology of magic lanterns
