A well-dressed gentleman pilots a strange, pedal-powered, flying machine (a 'fend-l'air') over the rooftops of Paris. The short silent film, made by early French auteur Ferdinand Zecca in 1901, may be both the first to depict a flying machine and to use a split-screen to achieve a special effect. The pilot (Zecca?), was suspended from the ceiling of the studio and the image captured on a segment of film with the bottom-half masked off. The masking was reversed, the film rewound and the lower half of the image (a Paris scene) was filmed. The combined image, a man flying over the city, must have been a marvel to contemporary viewers. Oddly, the machine's propeller and steering wheel are parallel to the direction of motion, likely to allow viewers to understand how the strange contraption could 'fly'. Also odd: the pilot is using only one pedal to propel the machine (the left side pedal is seen rotating but there is no foot on it). A unique and historic short from the earliest days of film-making. The IMDB date of 1906 may refer to the release date in the U.S. (three years after the first flight of an actual heavier-than-air flying machine, which likely made Zecca's contraption look pretty silly).
