The old saying is that figures do not lie; but a modern one is that
they can be made to. Just so the trick film places before one’s very
eyes what to one’s inner consciousness is impossible. Two favorite
devices of the trickster are brought into play in a recent film which
shows a cleverly produced romance woven about such an absurdity as the
painting of a landscape by the switching of a cow’s tail. The film
tells the story of a ne’er-do-well, in love, pretending to study art.
The father frowns on the match, but promises his favor if the son will
produce an example of his skill. In desperation the brush and palette
are taken to a field, and while the lovers are despairing, a friendly
cow approaches the easel. The switching begins at once, and a change
in the canvas is seen with every movement until a creditable painting
appears. What has appeared astonishing would have attracted less
attention had the audience seen that the pictures showing the restless
cow were taken at intervals, between which, while the camera was
stopped, a real artist worked on the picture, and stepped to one side
when the camera was put into action.
The work of the trickster is shown to advantage in reversing a
film depicting a building operation. When run backward, a brand-new
structure is seen to be pulled to pieces, and its various members
hauled away in wagons running backward.
One operator, who had shown boys diving from a high spring-board, has
related how, by reversing the film, he let his audience see the boys
come out of the water feet foremost, rise through the air the same
way, and by a graceful turn land on their feet on the spring-board.
Another has told how, by the same reverse motion, firemen, who a moment
before had rescued occupants from a burning building, were seen to
carry their victims back into the flames. We may perhaps look for some
of these enterprising tricksters to illustrate the possibility of that
expression of impossibility, “the unscrambling of eggs,” or for one
of them, with rare presence of mind, to catch on his lens an accident
shattering a number of valuable cut-glass pieces, and then to convert
a loss into profit by exhibiting the film reversed, and showing with
wonderful effectiveness a mass of broken glass ascend through space and
form itself on the table into the perfect originals.