Slippery Jim (1909)

A blatant pickpocket seems to have it in mind to drive the local police completely mad with his abilities as a Living Cartoon...

The year is 1909, and early auteur Segundo de Chomon is still at his creative peak, still working for Pathe Studios-and whose amazing short features are still in demand and generating income for the studio. This feature, just over 9 minutes long, shows off nearly every physical and camera trick Chomon has mastered to date-jump cuts, fades, tracking shots, fluid and graceful stop-motion techniques, and even a crude 'cut-and-paste' animation onto existing stock...between the subject matter, the animation and the strangely modern comedic timing, i'm rather convinced that this piece was one of the inspirations for Mack Sennet and his 'Keystone Cops' short films, Charlie Chaplain and his Modern Times 'machinery' sequences...and possibly even the later Monty Python comedy troupe...

Shortly after this and a handful of other features, Chomon would start up Iberico Films in Barcelona in 1910, and do piece work for other studios until his death in 1929. But the Pathe Era was IMHO his most productive period-and luckily most of these features survived the ravages of time to entertain us still...Music, B&W.