Boireau is sleeping in his bed, floating in the air, when a fire wakes him. So he takes his gun and shoots a fish down from the sky. After that, things get strange in this split-reel comedy.
Andre Deed was one of the hard-knock slapstick comedians who flourished in Europe before Mack Sennett and World War One knocked out the supply of European efforts. Boireau and Onesieme tended to camera tricks. The names varied according to producer and style. This one is full of camera tricks, apparent to the careful observer, but highly amusing nonetheless.
One final note: there is a tendency to proclaim works like this and Buster Keaton's "surrealistic". Surrealism was an artistic and literary movement that arose after the war that attempted to use non-realistic situations to illuminate the human condition and help its audience reach profound conclusions about the universe. Movies like this attempted to use their absurdities to make us laugh. In a hard-knocks world, that seems a far more important goal.
Andre Deed was one of the hard-knock slapstick comedians who flourished in Europe before Mack Sennett and World War One knocked out the supply of European efforts. Boireau and Onesieme tended to camera tricks. The names varied according to producer and style. This one is full of camera tricks, apparent to the careful observer, but highly amusing nonetheless.
One final note: there is a tendency to proclaim works like this and Buster Keaton's "surrealistic". Surrealism was an artistic and literary movement that arose after the war that attempted to use non-realistic situations to illuminate the human condition and help its audience reach profound conclusions about the universe. Movies like this attempted to use their absurdities to make us laugh. In a hard-knocks world, that seems a far more important goal.
