Number of user reviews: 13
User score: 7.2
The Black Imp is minor Melies (at least, compared to A Trip to the Moon), but it's still the Canon's entry for 1905, which appears to have produced little competition. There is nothing from the year--at least, not from a well-known auteur like Melies who has been thoroughly canonized--that advances the medium in any way significant enough to beat even this second-string Melies short. Perhaps The Black Imp is best characterized as an early B-movie; it clearly was nowhere near as expensive or complex as A Trip to the Moon or Voyage Across the Impossible, and is much smaller in scope and length.
Nevertheless, the film does offer at least one interesting point of discussion in its characterization of special effects as torment. This is not a film in which effects are a source of wonder or even horror, but rather of mischief. The imp isn't a menace, but a pain in the ass. This may be a symptom of the diminishing returns of effects in general: the impressive becomes commonplace; the mysterious, known; the novel, tedious. Just as on the stage, a magic trick is always most amazing the first time it's seen. The jump cut--Melies' signature trick--has accordingly degraded from profundity to competence. To view The Black Imp is to view an elaborate chore, the tedium of the constant jump cuts reflected in the exasperation of its protagonist. Why can't the effects just stop? Why can't they leave me alone? Can the film just end already so I can return to my daily routine? But the imp laughs at the viewer, for the act of viewing films has already become routine; in 1905, its tropes are already laid bare, its wonders no longer wondrous. And this is perhaps the real significance of The Black Imp: it is a film that knows you will continue to watch, even though you've seen it all. And it knows you'll come back the next time, too, because film is no longer something new to you; it has become part of life, part of discourse. It is now standard entertainment--and I do not mean "entertainment" as "something that entertains", but as something intended to distract.
Black Imp marks the point in he Canon at which films start being more about the self-sustainment of an industry than of advancing a craft; its production simply perpetuates the production pipeline set up by previous Melies films, ensures that the gears of his studio keep moving, that the livelihoods invested in that studio continue to be lively. It is busiwork both for its crew and the audience; for both parties, the purpose of the film is to fill time. The Imp is himself almost literally an embodiment of distraction; he is the thing that provides some kind of event to the otherwise empty existence of its protagonist. Yet the audience is not meant to identify with the protagonist here; no, the Imp himself is clearly the vessel for the viewer's escapism, a means by which they can imagine themselves having some sort of effect on the world, some kind of purpose, some kind of impact--any impact, any reaction, anything at all that would lead to an acknowledgment of their existence, an assurance that their actions can affect the world around them. But they will never do that by merely watching the film, and this is the whole idea, for the act of viewing a film is an exercise in pretending, of imagining (or projecting) an existence outside one's body; what is striking about The Black Imp, then, is the withering optimism of the medium. Where before an audience might imagine going to the moon, now, their fantasy is to annoy someone for a few minutes.
Other connections: Not much to say here. Wikipedia doesn't even have an article for this film.
Other most-voted titles of 1905:
2. Rescued By Rover (Lewin Fitzhamon and Cecil M. Hepworth | 763 votes)
3. The Mermaid (Georges Melies | 610 votes)
4. The Scheming Gambler's Paradise (Georges Melies | 585 votes)
5. The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog (Edwin S. Porter | 525 votes)
6. New York Subway (G.W. Bitzer | 496 votes)
7. The Enchanted Sedan Chair (Georges Melies | 327 votes)
8. The Night Before Christmas (Edwin S. Porter | 324 votes)
9. The Palace of Arabia Nights (Georges Melies | 233 votes)
10. The Kleptomaniac (Edwin S. Porter | 226 votes)
IMDB lists 1,702 titles for the year altogether.
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