Some thieves enter through the roof of a house and the inhabitant flees in terror in search of help.

Gaston Velle

Dévaliseurs nocturnes

A surrealist avant l&apos;heure

This piece of inspired lunacy is one of my favourite films of the early 1900s. It is not, to my mind,&quot;good for its time&quot;, &quot;good for 1904&quot;; it is just simply good.

Velle, in making &quot;trick films&quot; did certainly have Méliès in mind and one or two films that he made bear a resemblance to Méliès films. This film is not really a trick film (although it does make use of special effects)but is nevertheless a little reminiscent of Méliès&apos; Sur les toits (1897), again not a trick film but itself a parody version of a &quot;burglars on the roof&quot; film made by Georges Hatot for the Lumières which appeared earlier the same year and which Hatot would remake both when under contract at Gaumont (1898) and later again at Pathé (1901). So it is true that basic theme had been around for a while.

But it is quite wrong to say that Velle adds nothing new. Méliès&apos; films were later lauded by the surrealists who evidently found in them a resemblance to the kind of oneiric &quot;reality&quot; they proposed. To my mind, however, Velle, far more than Méliès, foreshadows surrealism in one or two of his films and it is precisely these added surreal touches that make them good films. Here it is very definitely the elements that Velle adds are the business on the roof (with the burglars &quot;drilling&quot; their way in), the silhouette effects and, above all, the extraordinary bike-ride to fetch the policeman.

There are actually two versions of this films in existence and both are available on youtube (one tinted and one black and white). One must clearly be a longer make of the other (and may therefore date from a couple of year later). Although the scenario remains basically the same, the actors are different, there are small variations here and there in the scenes and the black and white film is nearly twice the length. The tinted version is unquestionably the original 1904 film because it matches the details given in the Pathé catalogue both in terms of length (75m) and in terms of the ending.

In some ways the original ending, with the thieves simply escaping away on the stolen bicycle, is preferable; the second ending (not described in the catalogue) is more politically correct with the peasant and the policeman pursuing the cycling thieves in a car and eventually catching them. The shorter version is better quality and the tinting is attractive and effective but the pleasure of the long version is the greater time devoted to the bicycle ride (indicating that this was always the principal selling-point of the film). The incompetent policeman in an old-fashioned uniform comes from Mèliès but the idea of fetching a policeman on a bike and carrying him on the handlebars while he gives directions to the cyclist who cannot see - and if that is not original, I don&apos;t know what is - is entirely Velle&apos;s and what a brilliant and bizarre idea it is! It is indeed a sophisticated film, with excellent cutting between the various scenes. The bicycle-ride is beautifully done and not of course intended to be &quot;realistic&quot;. &quot;Now we can clearly see that the bike was mounted on some kind of moving platform&quot; says one reviewer, proud of his modern superiority, but does he really think a viewer in 1904 thought any differently. In fact the 1904 audience were almost certainly rather more conscious of the effects used because this would have been one of the talking-points of such films, just as people today discuss the special effects in modern films. Moving platforms had been one of the centre-pieces of the Paris Exposition of 1900 and can be seen in many of the films shot there. Films celebrated technology from their very outset and there is no reason whatsoever to suppose that cinema-goers then were just as techno-wise with regard to the technology of their own time as any audience of the &quot;digital&quot; age.

I don&apos;t believe in &quot;rating&quot; films (and certainly not out of ten) but this is one of the films I use in talks - along with Perez/Fabre&apos;s delightful Amor Pedestre and Emerson and Loos&apos;s superb The Mystery of the Leaping Fish - to try and convince those unfamiliar with early films that there is nothing necessarily in the least bit &quot;primitive&quot; or backward about them. The best still stand up today as fine films (the only allowance that has to be made is for the relative short length to which films were still restricted which obviously does represent a limitation.

This piece of inspired lunacy is one of my favourite films of the early 1900s. It is not, to my mind,"good for its time", "good for 1904"; it is just simply good.

Velle, in making "trick films" did certainly have Méliès in mind and one or two films that he made bear a resemblance to Méliès films. This film is not really a trick film (although it does make use of special effects)but is nevertheless a little reminiscent of Méliès' Sur les toits (1897), again not a trick film but itself a parody version of a "burglars on the roof" film made by Georges Hatot for the Lumières which appeared earlier the same year and which Hatot would remake both when under contract at Gaumont (1898) and later again at Pathé (1901). So it is true that basic theme had been around for a while.

But it is quite wrong to say that Velle adds nothing new. Méliès' films were later lauded by the surrealists who evidently found in them a resemblance to the kind of oneiric "reality" they proposed. To my mind, however, Velle, far more than Méliès, foreshadows surrealism in one or two of his films and it is precisely these added surreal touches that make them good films. Here it is very definitely the elements that Velle adds are the business on the roof (with the burglars "drilling" their way in), the silhouette effects and, above all, the extraordinary bike-ride to fetch the policeman.

There are actually two versions of this films in existence and both are available on youtube (one tinted and one black and white). One must clearly be a longer make of the other (and may therefore date from a couple of year later). Although the scenario remains basically the same, the actors are different, there are small variations here and there in the scenes and the black and white film is nearly twice the length. The tinted version is unquestionably the original 1904 film because it matches the details given in the Pathé catalogue both in terms of length (75m) and in terms of the ending.

In some ways the original ending, with the thieves simply escaping away on the stolen bicycle, is preferable; the second ending (not described in the catalogue) is more politically correct with the peasant and the policeman pursuing the cycling thieves in a car and eventually catching them. The shorter version is better quality and the tinting is attractive and effective but the pleasure of the long version is the greater time devoted to the bicycle ride (indicating that this was always the principal selling-point of the film). The incompetent policeman in an old-fashioned uniform comes from Mèliès but the idea of fetching a policeman on a bike and carrying him on the handlebars while he gives directions to the cyclist who cannot see - and if that is not original, I don't know what is - is entirely Velle's and what a brilliant and bizarre idea it is! It is indeed a sophisticated film, with excellent cutting between the various scenes. The bicycle-ride is beautifully done and not of course intended to be "realistic". "Now we can clearly see that the bike was mounted on some kind of moving platform" says one reviewer, proud of his modern superiority, but does he really think a viewer in 1904 thought any differently. In fact the 1904 audience were almost certainly rather more conscious of the effects used because this would have been one of the talking-points of such films, just as people today discuss the special effects in modern films. Moving platforms had been one of the centre-pieces of the Paris Exposition of 1900 and can be seen in many of the films shot there. Films celebrated technology from their very outset and there is no reason whatsoever to suppose that cinema-goers then were just as techno-wise with regard to the technology of their own time as any audience of the "digital" age.

I don't believe in "rating" films (and certainly not out of ten) but this is one of the films I use in talks - along with Perez/Fabre's delightful Amor Pedestre and Emerson and Loos's superb The Mystery of the Leaping Fish - to try and convince those unfamiliar with early films that there is nothing necessarily in the least bit "primitive" or backward about them. The best still stand up today as fine films (the only allowance that has to be made is for the relative short length to which films were still restricted which obviously does represent a limitation.

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