The Mistletoe Bough

The Mistletoe Bough (1904)

*** (out of 4)

This here is a rather interesting and entertaining film for the era. The plot is rather simple as a husband and wife decide to play a game of hide and seek in their castle. The woman runs off to hide and after hours of searching no one can find her. The film then flashes forward thirty years when the husband goes to the attic. I will let your imaginations do the rest of the work. This here was a pretty entertaining film because it's got a rather dark sense of humor to it that actually comes through quite nicely. The film certainly isn't ground-breaking but it's an entertaining picture that film buffs should enjoy.

During a wedding reception at a Stately Home, the bride goes to hide in an unused room in a heavy chest. Her corpse is found thirty years later.

This short is based on a poem by E.T. Bayley. There's nothing on the Internet about him, but a bit of poking around turned up Thomas Haynes Bayly, who co-wrote a poem that might be the source material.

Although this short subject will seem primitive to the modern viewer on the BFI's Youtube site, it is a solid work for the era, with its stage composition, three-shot camera set-up and an "illustrated text" style of story-telling that would still be going strong a decade later. Director Percy Stow had directed the previous year's ALICE IN WONDERLAND; his 1908 version of THE TEMPEST would show his lively interest in the evolving grammar of film making. Although this short might not be terribly interesting, it's one of the few readily available works by an inventive director of the era.