Post No Bills

Despite the presence of an armed sentry, a 'post no bills' sign is ignored by squabbling bill posters. One of Georges Méliès' early films, there's not much to it and no 'special effects'. Of historic interest only.

Defense d'afficher (1896)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

aka Post No Bills

Georges Melies comedy has an armed guard protecting a wall, which has a sign in front of it saying that no one is allowed to hang any bills. Of course, two idiots come along to break the rule and end up fighting each other. This "comedy" really doesn't have any real laughs so it's going to be of main interest to fans of Melies. The director, best known for A TRIP TO THE MOON and his "trick" films, made quite a few comedies but in a way it's easy to see why he isn't known for them. For the most part this thing is pleasant enough and since it runs under two-minutes there's really no dead space. I think the comic timing of the two main characters are really lacking as they never really sell the joke but to be fair to them the joke itself really isn't that funny to begin with.

Most people have seen few, if any, films from the very earliest days of movies. Well, compared to the average film of the day, this Georges Méliès product is great--mostly because everything else was so terribly boring and mundane. The bottom line is that the giants of early film, such as Lumière and Edison, were featuring the most ordinary of activities in films that only lasted a minute or less. Folks back in 1896 loved watching babies eat, people smoking and people smiling at the camera. So, seeing a comedy (of sorts) was a huge improvement and while you might thing "Post No Bills" is a bust, it was big stuff at the time.

The film consists of a very stupid soldier walking in front of a sign saying to 'post no bills'. Although he's standing practically next to the sign, two bozos come by and slap up posters. Believe it or not, this is a laugh riot....okay, it's NOT but it was back in the day.

As a guard marches at his post about 125 kilometers outside of Paris, some billposters get into a fight over who gets to cover the forbidden wall with posters.

This is one of the earliest of Melies' films, listed as #15 in his catalogue and, if he had thought of any of his camera tricks, he didn't use them here. The camera sits, watching events and while this might have been an amusing bit for Melies' show at the Theatre Robert-Houdin, it isn't terribly interesting to the modern eye -- except it is an early Melies, which makes it interesting to enthusiasts like me, newly rediscovered in the past couple of years.

"Post No Bills" is one of director Georges Melies's earliest works. Labelled as number 15 in his catalogue, it is thus his fifteenth movie. And, considering its age, it is no surprise that there are no special effects to be witnessed, for a very simple reason: he hadn't discovered any of them yet. This is why his earliest films, now mostly lost, were remakes of Lumiere subjects. His first film, "Une Partie de Cartes", is a remake of the Lumiere Brothers' "Partie d'ecarte"; his fifth film, "Watering the Flowers" is believed to have remade the old gag from "L'arroseur arrose" (though it is now considered lost).

But back to this film. Like "L'arroseur arrose", the gag in this one minute short is very basic and extremely outdated. This is no surprise at all, because ALL early film comedies were like this--and audiences thought they were hilarious. This one has an incompetent guard leaving his post only to be blamed later when two bill-posters hang their posters on the wall he's guarding. As far as I know, the Lumiere Brothers made only one version of this gag a year later, in a film entitled "Colleurs Affiches", so this short could be the first time the joke was filmed (or just the earliest available rendition). For 1896, it's pretty good even if the basic story isn't at all funny nowadays.