Le nouveau seigneur du village

The New Lord of the Village (1908)

*** (out of 4)

aka Le Nouveau seigneur du village

This Georges Melies film would have benefited from some of the narration that a few of his movies have or at least title cards as the start of it is somewhat confusing. I'm going to guess from the title of the film that a new Lord arrives in a small village and appears to either kick someone out or causes some harm to a female. From here we see the Lord enter a strange cave where the typical Melies madness happens as he sees various spirits, a large crab and frog and other strange things. THE NEW LORD OF THE VILLAGE clocks in at just under 9-minutes and this here seemed a bit too long. For starters, as I said the film starts off pretty slow and it was hard to really know what was going on. Once the tricks started to happen you certain enter a deja vu area but some of them were so charming that they make the film worth sitting through. We didn't stop at the tricks because we then flash to another sequence outside the cave but fans of Melies will still want to view this one even though it's no where near his best work.