Great Film overall

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Once more, a traveller finds himself in a nightmare. He tries to simply enjoy a good night's rest. While his is getting ready, various pieces of furniture disappear and reappear. At one point, he takes off his pants and they fly through the air. Soon it's his bed. The man is frantic and overacts like crazy, which is great fun. These crazy living quarters are a real treat and must have been a delight to the viewers.

And here he does it even in the truest sense of the word. Even if it runs over 100 seconds and is pretty long for that era back then, this short film is packed with an amount of action that is almost too much for its running-time. A man enters an inn and from the moment he undresses things get awkward. Everything appears, reappears or moves with no logical explanation behind it. Every time he focuses on a new object, you could be certain something was about to happen with it. That includes primarily his clothes: coats, boots and pants, but also a chair keeps changing his position and the highlight is the big bed disappearing. No rest for him, it seems. Only his massive beard stays exactly where it is. Solid work from Méliès, neither among his best nor worst.

A traveller experiences strange paranormal activity in a room at an inn where he stops to stay the night. Clothes fly around, a chair vanishes and his boots walk off; all to the consternation of the spooked out man.This little comic short from Georges Méliès is a very early showcase for his cinematic trickery and visual invention. Just as significantly it illustrates his sense of humour. Méliès made many funny films which incredibly are still amusing even now, over a century down the line. The effects remain impressive even though we all know how they are done. There is always a loving care in Méliès work. This one is no exception and shows why he is the first cinematic genius.

Bewitched Inn, The (1897) *** 1/2 (out of 4) aka L'Auberge ensorceleeMelies plays a man who shows up at his motel room where ghostly things start happening right from the start. We get to witness all sorts of magic tricks throughout this film including his clothes flying through the air, his boots walking off and of course a scene where he goes to sit in a chair only to have the chair move on him. The special effects are, needless to say, terrific and it's amazing at how well they hold up today. The magic Melies brings to the screen is certainly something very special and this film contains plenty of laughs to keep you entertained. The highlight of the film has to be the exploding candle.