The '?' Motorist

Director Walter Booth's silent short follows a couple in a magical car as the they travel to the moon, hitch a ride on a comet, and take a spin on Saturn's rings before returning to Earth only to run afoul of the law. The film is one of a number of fanciful shorts produced by cinema pioneer Robert Paul. The substitution splices are quite good for the time (especially the switch between the live policeman and the dummy that gets run over). The animation and double exposures are less effective (e.g. the car is translucent and out of scale when it crashes into the courtroom). The images of the car circling Saturn are quaint but memorable. The film was remade and expanded by Booth (then working with producer Charles Urban) as 'The Automatic Motorist' (1911), which follows much the same story except that the car is driven by a robot chauffeur and the trip includes a visit to Saturn's interior and an underwater excursion.

This is a mad little film. Quite bizarre and inventive for the time I think. I was bemused rather than genuinely entertained.

This old curio is good fun to watch and is very creative in using the techniques available to film-makers at the time. It starts with a car driving along - in itself still something of a novelty then - and the car quickly gets involved in a series of fantastical adventures. It's filled with special effects that are excellent for the era, and that are still entertaining to watch. It gives the feeling of a free-wheeling, uninhibited approach, and yet the quality shows it to have been very carefully made. In its historical context it is also interesting, as a look at attitudes towards automobiles and the changes they brought.

Pros: 1. The quick cut edits help to give the short a suitable fun and upbeat feel. 2. The special effects are far ahead of their time, and they still hold up 114 years later. 3. The set design is beautifully quaint, especially the outer space setting.

Cons: 1. The plot makes little sense, and clearly most of the thought was directed to the special effects, instead of composing a compelling story. 2. The comedy completely misses , and whilst it may have been funny yesteryear, the the humour hasn't aged well. 3. The lack of intriguing characters makes it difficult to be properly invested.

This is an exceptional trick film from early cinema. The trick film was one of the most popular genres of the time, popularized and created by Georges Méliès. This one by Robert W. Paul and Walter R. Booth is superior to Méliès's films in the respect that it's not chained to the tableau style of storytelling that Méliès relentlessly pursued in his attempt to make film an extension of theatre. That is, instead of one complete scene followed by another, generally linked by dissolves, this film is linked by simple, continuously smoother cuts. Scenes are somewhat dissected and action moves from shot to shot in a modern continuity fashion. It also isn't confined to the stage--the cramped studio in which Méliès worked with the camera taking the position of the proscenium arch.

The open space allows for the common gag of a car running over a man (replaced by a dummy), which is technically done fairly well here for the time. From there, the car and occupants drive up a building and up to the sky and, eventually, outer space. The sky and outer space bit seems characteristic of what Méliès had been doing. The final gag is also quite clever--playing with the notion of the good 'ole horse carriage as safe and the newfangled automobile as dangerous: a common theme in trick films. This is zany, fun stuff, and I can see why these "cinema of attractions" continued to coexist with the generally less-entertaining story films. Apparently, having since left Paul and Paul having since left the movie business, Booth remade this in 1911 as "The Automatic Motorist".