Perfect cast and a good story

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

A Masterpiece!

A Disappointing Continuation

When it comes to color-stenciling, the Spanish filmmaker Segundo de Chomon knew it all. I do not know him as well as Georges Melies, but when it came to visual effects, Chomon was good at competing with his rival. Unfortunately I don't have many of his films on DVD, it's sad that in Kino's wonderful cinema set they didn't include more of his films because there are only two, this being one of them. However, what this film displays is very good. Not only do we get a great coloring job but also we get some great visuals.First, a Chinese conjurer and his assistant appear in a strange kind of box and make a woman appear in the box. They make her disappear. The conjurers then stack some bricks on a table and knock them off. Then one of the conjurers holds up a piece of paper and the bricks magically move up in front of it. Then pictures appear on the bricks.Segundo de Chomon was a genius. He deserves as much appreciation as Melies.

Two magicians make people appear and disappear in front of our very eyes in this colourful French short film. Modern audiences will not be amazed at all by the appearing and disappearing characters but at the time I can imagine it was met with "how did they do that" gasps. However watching it now is still a wonderful experience because this was almost exactly a hundred years ago when this sort of thing was new and being thought up as these films were made. New ideas were being taken and expanded upon and used in different ways.This film simply gives the producers a structure to play within. There is some humour but really this is all about the visual effects and with the colours on top of that it makes it interesting to watch when you have a feel for what the historical context you are watching it within.

There are lots of visual effects and camera tricks in this short feature about "Magic Bricks", and most of them work well. Evaluated solely in terms of technique, it's quite good. The material itself, though, is rather bland, with only a couple of really interesting moments.The movie shows two conjurers performing an act together, using boxes, blocks, and other similar props. Except for one or two of the tricks later in the show, most of their tricks are not especially interesting in themselves, and the main reason to watch this film is to see how the camera was used to create illusions that would otherwise have been difficult or impossible to make.Most of the visual effects work well, and they give the appearance of having been set up and filmed with care. The film was also hand-tinted in color, although much of the color has now faded. The technical and production end are pretty good, and they make it watchable in spite of the somewhat drab nature of the material itself.

this movie is very familiar to george melies movie tchin chao the chinese conjurer from 1904 but melies worked with living animals and pathe did not he uses some other techniques,i see it as a remake of melies work.