User Reviews

As others have noted, this is an early example of an exact copy of one studio's film being made by another - in this case, the French giants Pathe Frere rip-off British filmmaker George Albert Smith. It was a common practice back in the early days of cinema when film-making was subject to even more piracy than the internet is today.

The film itself is quite amusing - in fact it is probably slightly better than the original thanks to a much brisker pace, and a prettier girl in the first scene which makes for a funnier contrast with the old hag (who is probably a man in drag) in the second. It's certainly still quite amusing even today, nearly 110 years later.

It just so happens that the same night I watched this very early silent short, I also watched a film by George Albert Smith that was made one year earlier--entitled "Let Me Dream Again". And, low and behold, the two films were nearly 100% identical!! This film (Rêve et réalité) was definitely not inspired from Smith's--it was a complete rip-off---being a wonderful example of early plagiarism. This was not a unique thing, as there were so many tiny studios in the early days and copying others' films wasn't unusual. But, in this case it's more than re-making the other film--it's stealing it.

Regardless of the spotty pedigree, this still is a pretty funny film. It features an old guy making out with a pretty young lady--and it all turns out to be too good to be true. This is one of the few early films that still will get you to laugh today--no small accomplishment.

The idea of a story involving "Rêve et Réalité" (Dream and Reality) was a familiar one in very early cinema, and despite how old this film is, it was not the first to use the concept. But it's a watchable version of the idea, and is mildly amusing, at least as far as the simple story allows it to be. The story is really just one key gag, but the movie sets it up efficiently enough, without wasting time or energy. The idea itself can also be (and was later) used more thoughtfully, but this particular feature only went as far as it had already been developed by others.

Technically, it's relatively polished for its time, with the dissolve effect working well as one picture transforms into another. If the idea itself had not already been a familiar one, this could be considered as pretty good. Even as it is, it's at least worth seeing if you are interested in these very old movies, and it's understandable if cinema's pioneers sometimes wanted to try their hands at filming ideas that others had already used. They certainly had better reasons to do so than do today's film-makers when they continually recycle material that wasn't all that good in the first place. This feature is fairly well-crafted; it just isn't anything really new even for the time.

An old man flirts with a pretty young woman and gets very amorous, only for the reality of his situation to become horribly apparent to him! This is a very simple French film with one gag to deliver and a short time to do it in. The joke is not that funny mainly because the manner of delivery of the punch line is not great. It feels rushed and without any attention to the characters reactions etc, as if the explanation would be enough without any other touches. Technically I didn't think it did a good job of moving from dream to reality. The UK silent short "Let Me Dream Again" did the same thing the year before but it used (for the first time) the camera going out of focus and back again to mark the shift between dream and reality. It also had a better delivery of the punch line as it didn't cut off so quickly.

Not really worth a look then apart from being of interest to see film makers play with dream sequences in the early days – effects we all take for granted now but were being thought up right here.

While this is a pretty entertaining little gag film from the earliest years of cinema, it's sadly not original at all. Previously, George Albert Smith had made a short film entitled "Let Me Dream Again" (1900) that used the exact same basic gag. This film, while being a ripoff of that other film, is not bad--it actually flows at a faster pace while the other drags a little in spots. I liked the de-focus used in the original a lot better than the dissolve used here--but the wife in this version is lots more homely. They're both about equal all around.