• Director: Ferdinand Zecca
  • Year: 1901
  • Starring: Jean Liézer
  • Runtime: 5m

There’s a comic book quality to this film that I adore. The backgrounds have a striking illustrated appearance, the actor’s movements are cartoonishly exaggerated, and the flashback sequence is basically a thought bubble above our sleeping criminal’s head.

The story itself is a bit pedestrian and the moral is as simply drawn as the backgrounds: if you drink and gamble you’ll lose your house, your family, and eventually your head.

Thankfully, the simplicity of the tale does not overshadow the style of the telling. And boy does it have style.

We’re treated to cross dissolves, murder, justice, wine, and French people all with a unique and original aesthetic—I dare any modern director to have a minute long scene where the star of the movie lies completely still while a picture-in-picture flashback plays above them.