Ava-Grace Willis
Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.
Brennan Camacho
Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.
Roxie
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
framptonhollis
Melies made hundreds upon hundreds of short films; some of them masterpiece,s others mediocre, many falling somewhere in between. It can be proposed that "The Cake-Walk Infernal" is among his better known works (that is casting aside legendary films like "A Trip to the Moon", "The Voyage Across the Impossible ", or even "The Merry Frolics of Satan"), mainly because of Martin Scorsese's recommendation of it for aspiring filmmakers/film students. This film is just simple, classic Melies with an extra dose of weird. It mostly consists of a parodic version of a dance that seems to have been popular at the time of the film's release; it takes place in Hell, despite the merry mood, and Melies himself plays a reasonably athletic Satan. The visual effects here are quite phenomenal, particularly for 1903 (!), and the sets, while sort of cheesy, are charming and appealing to the eye. There are also plenty of laughs to be had, mainly because of Melies' comic and over the top performance and the trick photography that soon ensues. Those that are rather familiar with Melies and his style will likely be able to appreciate this for what it is: another unique and wild entry in the vast Melies cannon.
Michael_Elliott
Infernal Cake-Walk, The (1903) *** (out of 4) aka Le Cake-Walk InfernalOne of Melies best know films, this movie here takes place in Hell where various people and demons do a dance, which includes fire and magic. This here is certainly one of the director's catchiest films as it contains a rather wicked sense of humor as we see all these demons dancing around. The visual look of the film is very nice and the sets used are also very good. There's a great sequence with two demons fighting with fire and another great scene where a demon disappears from the screen. I wouldn't exactly call the dancing in the film good but it is catchy when mixed with everything else going on.
bob the moo
Do they dance in Hell? If they do then this is maybe what it is like. We join the scene of naïve celebration among the dancers when a demon bursts through onto the scene to torment the only black dancer with a version of the cake-walk that has the fires of damnation behind it.Back when many films were very descriptive and very 'real' in their subjects, Méliès must have been a bewildering influence. Films called 'man riding a horse' were wowing them in the moving pictures (or movies as they are still called) by doing exactly what they said on the tin, or in other words, such a film would feature a man on a horse, a training coming into a station and so on. Méliès created short films that contain visual images that still retain their appeal today and will be known to many people (even if they don't know that they are his images!) and this is the modern appeal of his films to me. Sure they are simple in terms of substance and are more style over content but remember these are a century old – think of how they must have been viewed then!This is one example but it is not one of his best for my money. The film is weird even watching it now and it is far more about visual impact than about its narrative foundation or substance. It looks great and some of the effects show him to have been years ahead of his time – anyone looking for meaning or plot will be annoyed but the focus is visuals and, in this regard, it still works and is very imaginative and strange.I have watched many rubbish films and many good films that have lasted two hours; this film lasts only a very minutes and is well worth the amount of time it took for me to watch it. Méliès' images are still in the public psyche today and this film, while not his most famous, is another good example of why that is the case.
KuRt-33
The first cinemaphotographers were merely interested in shooting scenes exactly as they happened, resulting in documentaries (or cinéma vérité) that are mainly kept for their pioneer function in film history. Interesting in so far as they allow us to see how people looked over a century ago, they are just what their title describes: a train arriving in a station, people leaving a factory, etc. If you don't want to know what is going to happen in "The unloading of a cart", you better not read the title.Then came Georges Méliès who waved the train that was 'cinéma vérité' goodbye and chose instead for the wacky path of outlandish fiction. Méliès is not just important because he was a pioneer in film fiction. If you watch his work, you'll have to admit it is so good it has no trouble overclassing films that were shot a generation later. Frankly, you need to see German expressionist films like "Das Cabinett des Dr. Caligari" to watch something equally rich in imagination and imagery.I forgot who it was, but there was a director who said directing was the easiest job in the world. You let other people do the job (actors, directors of photography, sound engineers, set designers, .) and all you basically have to do is say "action!", "cut!" and eventually "it's a wrap". This too makes Méliès special: he was not just a director, his jobs included author, producer, director and set designer. "Voyage dans la lune" (1902), one of his most famous works, has an incredibly beautiful set. Some of it really reminds you of paintings by Bosch. The story may not the most staggering you've ever heard, it's how it's filmed that makes it special and excellent. A professor and crew are shot out of a giant canon and land on the moon. They're overhappy to have made the trip when they encounter the moon people, creatures that a century later still look more terrifying than the stuff you see on shows like "Buffy". Like the vampires in the teen show Méliès's moon creatures disappear into thin air when they're hit. The scientists run for their life, manage to escape and are welcomed back to Earth as the heroes of the century. The image of the giant bullet shot in the moon's eye didn't accidently make it to myriads of posters and t-shirts. No, it's just a very good example of how beautiful Méliès's works were and are.But does he need a story to entertain the viewer? No. Take "Le cake-walk infernal", a film he shot a year later. There isn't a real story to tell here, Méliès used a very popular dance at the time and used it as the basis for a film. How would the cake-walk be danced if they knew it in Hell? Méliès himself appears as the demon who jumps out of the cake in the second part of the film and that's where the man goes experimental again. Méliès manages to shoot himself in two parts: a dancing torso, dancing legs and a void in between. By today's standards the trickery isn't too convincing, but you'd have to be of bad will to say it's poorly done. Then you have to think of this short movie being made nearly a century ago and it's then you fully realise Méliès was more than a pioneer, he was a genius. A genius who sometimes told a story and sometimes just went for lavish eye-candy.
