The Devilish Tenant (1909)
A bearded stranger with a single suitcase moves into a rented room and magically produces furniture, paintings, and even his own family from the case, then vanishes just as cleverly when the rent comes due.
The Devilish Tenant is a showcase for Georges Méliès’s stop-substitution trickery, made at his Montreuil studio during the same prolific stretch that produced hundreds of his trick films; Méliès himself plays the conjuring tenant, packing an entire household into, and back out of, one valise.
Background
Georges Méliès directed and starred in The Devilish Tenant, a 1909 trick film that shows his stage-magic approach to early cinema. A bearded stranger with a single suitcase rents a room, then produces furniture, paintings and his own family from the case before vanishing when the rent falls due. Méliès was a stage magician who turned to film in the 1890s, and his trick films were built on substitution splices and stop-motion effects. The film runs about six minutes and shows his interest in comic illusion set in ordinary domestic spaces.
What to watch for
Pay attention to the trick effects, which Méliès uses to make objects and people appear and vanish. The comic gag depends on the audience’s expectation of an ordinary rental, and the humour comes from the tenant’s outrageous behaviour. Méliès plays the lead with the deadpan timing of a stage magician. The effects are achieved in camera, using the splicing and stop-motion methods he pioneered, and the film’s rhythm reflects the stage shows he gave in Paris. Notice how the disappearance at the end resolves the joke and closes the story.
