framptonhollis
At the very, very beginning of cinema, cinemagician Georges Melies refused to be caught between the boundaries of limit. Despite lack of cinematic technique at the time, Melies worked hard to crate what his imagination desired, and thus, film as an art form significantly developed in the process. This early action-comedy hybrid is a wacky, cartoonish depiction of a manic wrestling match made all the more insane by the constant disappearing, reappearing, morphing, etc. of the wrestlers. Men are torn apart and put back together, they are surrealistically flattened, and keep switching back and forth from being women. it's a ridiculous little movie, and hugely imaginative and impressive for its time, particularly in a visual sense. I was legitimately wow-ed by this film's special effects, even more so than with Melies' other movies. Remember: this movie was made back in 1901, well over 100 years ago, and yet it still is jam packed with some of the most magical cinematic tricks of all time 9not to mention, much of it is still also genuinely funny).
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
"The Fat and the Lean Wrestling Match" is a Georges Méliès short film that tells us a but about gender roles around 1900, 115 years ago. Very early, we see two women in fancy dresses and they reappear in this almost 2-minute-long short film, but most of the time we see two men wrestling. But it's more than that. Méliès uses trick photography again to create 3 funny and awkward situations where obviously one of the fighters was a doll used for that particular moment. All in all, it's a solid Méliès film, not among his best. Obviously, this is still black-and-white and silent, even if there are versions out there where people used soundtracks. Not that great too watch though except the scenes where the master used the trick photography I mentioned before.
Red-Barracuda
In this film, master cinematic experimenter Georges Méliès uses his celebrated trickery to depict a wrestling match. The effect is like a live action cartoon. Except that this is 1901 and animated cartoons hadn't even been invented yet! In other words it's quite original. And it's really still quite amusing too. Méliès fills its short running time with a barrow load of comic invention. We have women morphing into men; a man having his head and limbs knocked off and reassembled; and a fellow who is flattened like a pancake. What this movie shows, apart from Méliès mastery of visual trickery, is his sense of humour and comic timing. Some comedy shows from a few years ago are no longer amusing, so it's really quite impressive that this feature from over one hundred years ago still manages to raise a few smiles.
Michael_Elliott
Fat And Lean Wrestling Match (1900) *** (out of 4)aka Nouvelles luttes extravagantes This here is one of the director's most loved films. The film starts off with a fat woman and a lean woman wrestling but then they morph into a fat man and a lean man (played by Melies). This film is highly enjoyable from start to finish and contains some pretty good special effects. The highlight of the film is a hilarious sequence where one of the men gets decapitated and then ripped to shreds before being brought back to life again. The silly, child like humor throughout this short makes it one of the director's most loved films.
AD
