The Cook in Trouble

Sorcellerie culinaire (scène clownesque), released in the US as The Cook in Trouble and in the UK as Cookery Bewitched, is a 1904 French short silent film directed by Georges Méliès. It was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 585–588 in its catalogues.[1]

The Cook in Trouble
Directed byGeorges Méliès
StarringGeorges Méliès
Production
company
Release date
1904
CountryFrench
LanguageSilent

Production

Méliès plays the cook in the film. Special effects used include pyrotechnics and substitution splices.[1]

The action of the film is a variation on the "trapdoor chase", a type of spectacular chase sequence particularly associated with the Lupino family of performers, including Lupino Lane. In Méliès's version, the trapdoors are designed as openings within the kitchen set: a window, an oven door, a pot, a drawer, and so on.[2] Describing the film for British exhibitors, Charles Urban's film catalogue called the result "acrobatic".[1]

Reception and survival

With its fast-paced antics, designed to build up a hectic visual rhythm rather than to advance a narrative, The Cook in Trouble has been seen as a particularly modernist Méliès film, presaging Dadaism and Surrealism[3] as well as Mack Sennett's chase films.[1]

According to the summary in Méliès's American catalogue, The Cook in Trouble originally ended with the cook's clothes being retrieved from the cooking pot; this ending is missing from the surviving copy of the film.[1]

References
  1. Essai de reconstitution du catalogue français de la Star-Film; suivi d'une analyse catalographique des films de Georges Méliès recensés en France, Bois d'Arcy: Service des archives du film du Centre national de la cinématographie, 1981, pp. 197–198, ISBN 2-903053-07-3, OCLC 10506429
  2. Balducci, Anthony (2012), The Funny Parts: A History of Film Comedy Routines and Gags, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, pp. 145–46
  3. Strauven, Wanda (1997), "L'art de Georges Méliès et le futurisme italien", in Malthête, Jacques; Marie, Michel (eds.), Georges Méliès, l'illusionniste fin de siècle?: actes du colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle, 13–22 août 1996, Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle, p. 343
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