Making Christmas Crackers - 1910

 

Country: United Kingdom

Language: English

Stars: A.E. Coleby

Release Date: 1910 (United Kingdom)

Production Co: Cricks & Martin Films

Genres: Documentary | Short

Factory workers make Christmas crackers, a process that is shown in detail. Girls are shown making the stockings on sewing machines. A woman operates the machine that makes the tum-tums (the cards at the center of the crackers). A man operates a machine that prepares the paper that makes up the body of the cracker. A man at a band saw cuts out paper caps. A woman folds and glues together the paper caps. Two women put together and pack the crackers. Finally, a family is shown at Christmas. Mother and children dance around the Christmas tree. Father and grandfather stand close by. Father tosses a box of crackers into the air, and the children gather them off the floor. There's a gigantic cracker on top of the tree. Father takes it down and has two of the children pull it apart. In a puff of smoke, Santa Claus emerges from it and hands out gifts to the children.

Keystone Kops: Our Dare-Devil Chief (1915) 3 of 3

 
Classic Keystone Kop slapstick with the police chief (Ford Sterling) being pursued by the mayors wife (Minta Durfee) and also by a band of crooks (including Edward F. Cline and Al St. John), but for different reasons. The Mayors wife is in love with the Police Chief, while the crooks want to blow him up with dynamite. The Police Chief suspects that the Mayor (Harry Bernard) might be on the crooks side. The final confrontation with the crooks involves a gag in which the Police Chief ties a rope to a messenger he sends to deliver a note to the crooks, with the other end tied around him. The Mayor gets tangled up in the events, and the Keystone Kops arrest the bad guys. Directed by Charley Chase.

Keystone Kops: Our Dare-Devil Chief (1915) 2 of 3

 
Classic Keystone Kop slapstick with the police chief (Ford Sterling) being pursued by the mayors wife (Minta Durfee) and also by a band of crooks (including Edward F. Cline and Al St. John), but for different reasons. The Mayors wife is in love with the Police Chief, while the crooks want to blow him up with dynamite. The Police Chief suspects that the Mayor (Harry Bernard) might be on the crooks side. The final confrontation with the crooks involves a gag in which the Police Chief ties a rope to a messenger he sends to deliver a note to the crooks, with the other end tied around him. The Mayor gets tangled up in the events, and the Keystone Kops arrest the bad guys. Directed by Charley Chase.

Keystone Kops: Our Dare-Devil Chief (1915) 1 of 3

 
Classic Keystone Kop slapstick with the police chief (Ford Sterling) being pursued by the mayors wife (Minta Durfee) and also by a band of crooks (including Edward F. Cline and Al St. John), but for different reasons. The Mayors wife is in love with the Police Chief, while the crooks want to blow him up with dynamite. The Police Chief suspects that the Mayor (Harry Bernard) might be on the crooks side. The final confrontation with the crooks involves a gag in which the Police Chief ties a rope to a messenger he sends to deliver a note to the crooks, with the other end tied around him. The Mayor gets tangled up in the events, and the Keystone Kops arrest the bad guys. Directed by Charley Chase.

Détresse et Charité - 1905

Country: France
Also known as: The Christmas Angel
Review extracted from imdb:
Unlike all other Méliès films I've seen so far, this one plays it serious - as a melodram. A poor family in a run-down house where snow falls through the broken roof, there's no coal to heat the pathetic little stove, mother is sick, father sends daughter out to beg. Rejected by other beggars, the girl twice collapses to die in the snow... and then, the happy end indicated in the title :) I enjoyed watching this very much. Sometimes a teardrop in the eye makes one feel more involved with a film..
Notable details: an automobile (cardboard prop, though) and an interesting bakery scene where half of the screen is inside, the other half outside, done with a partly missing wall.

Hydrothérapie fantastique (English Title:The Doctor's Secret ) - 1909

Country: France
Also Known As: The Doctor's Secret
Director: Georges Méliès
Stars: Georges Méliès
Doctors blow to pieces a patient in a hydrotherapy machine and re-assemble him.

Cruel Cruel Love - 1914

Chaplin's 8th Film released March 26 1914

This early Chaplin film has him playing a character quite different from the Tramp for which he would become famous. He is a rich, upper-class gentleman whose romance is endangered when his girlfriend oversees him being embraced by a maid. Chaplin's romantic interest in this film, Minta Durfee, was the wife of fellow Keystone actor, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.