The Four Troublesome Heads (1898) Review

 

The Four Troublesome Heads (1898)

The Four Troublesome Heads follows an illusionist, who over the course of his show, removes his head multiple times to help contribute to his act. 

A whole 10 years after the world’s earliest surviving motion-picture was filmed, The Four Troublesome Heads introduces us to some of the earliest forms of special effects and camera trickery, as an illusionist supplants his head(s) across several tables to create an effect that quite simply looks like magic. Obviously, upon closer inspection, he’s simply cutting out separate reels that contain his head and pasting them over the tables, combining it with a nifty little double exposure trick as well it looks like, while a black bag is thrown over his head to give the illusion that he’s headless (blending into the black background quite effortlessly). 

While rather simplistic, only clocking in at around a minute, I can imagine that this short film was incredibly groundbreaking for it’s time, showing that even in it’s infancy, people were already obsessed with pushing the boundaries of what was possible with motion pictures, inventing techniques that would go on to be used many years forward (i.e. the black bag and background trick acting as one of the earliest forms of green screen). 

The Four Troublesome Heads, directed by Georges Melies, is quite honestly, a spectacular achievement in early filmmaking because while short, it showed the bounds of imagination and creativity when applied to an early art such as video, blending illusion, magic, theatre, and motion picture all into one ingenious little clip. 

9.5/10