Adventures of William Tell (1898)

Original title

Guillaume Tell et le Clown

Directed by

Georges Méliès

Genre

comedy film, silent film

Country

France

Runtime

1 min

Rating

5.6 of 10 from 44 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A clown tries to shoot fruit off the head of a dummy. The dummy comes to life, leading to a series of comically violent mix-ups.

slapstickplayfulwhimsicalsurrealfast-pacedinventiveabsurddarkly humorous

What happens

Adventures of William Tell (French: Guillaume Tell et le clown) is an 1898 French silent trick film directed by Georges Méliès, featuring a clown trying to shoot fruit off the head of a dummy which comes to life. The film is "a knockabout farce based on jump-cuts and the timely substitution of dummies for real bodies", with, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "a level of onscreen violence not previously seen in a surviving Méliès film", which marks "a bridge between the onstage effects of the famous Théâtre du Grand Guignol and countless later outpourings of comically extreme screen violence as seen in everything from Tex Avery cartoons to the early films of Sam Raimi". Adventures of William Tell was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 159 in its catalogues, where it is advertised as a scène comico-fantastique. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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• The Clown vs. Satan (1901)
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• Les clowns Price (1898)
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