My Wife, the Movie Star

"Films Confiscated from a French Brothel" is a bare all Avant-garde Anthology homage to silent stag films.

In this sound-era silent film, a tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower seller.

During America’s Civil War, Union spies steal engineer Johnny Gray's beloved locomotive, 'The General'—with Johnnie's lady love aboard an attached boxcar—and he single-handedly must do all in his power to both get The General back and to rescue Annabelle.

A gold prospector in Alaska struggles to survive the elements and win the heart of a dance hall girl.

This scene is laid in the parlor of a New York tenement. Two watchers at the wake are smoking and drinking, while the widow is weeping over the coffin. The attention of the three is attracted for an instant, and the supposed corpse rises up, drinks all the beer in the pitcher which is standing on a table nearby, and lies down in the coffin again. The mourners return, and seeing that the beer is gone, engage in a controversy over it. During the scrap the corpse jumps out of the coffin and takes part in the melee.

A burlesque on the work of highwaymen in Chicago. An elderly gentleman is sandbagged and robbed by a thug, who inadvertently leaves some money on the victim's prostrate body. A policeman shows up.

The scene takes place in a fashionable cafe. A well dressed couple enter, and after a careful perusal of the menu, conclude on an order of boiled eggs and Welsh rarebit.

This scene opens by showing a pretty cook mixing bread in the kitchen. Jones comes in unexpectedly from a trip and carries a dress suitcase. He inquires for his wife and is told by the cook that she is absent. Jones is hungry and asks for something to eat. The cook is very obliging and Jones becomes unruly, chuckles the cook under the chin. The cook puts her arms around Jones' neck and leaves finger imprints of flour on his back. This is where the trouble commences. (Edison catalogue)

A boy is led into the frame by two nursemaids who give him a big ball to play with. For the remainder of the film heads appear and disappear, stage props blow up and turn into other objects or people, and finally Bob Kick disappears.

This scene opens with a view of a stage setting and private box. After Miss Dolly Lightfoot has finished a clever dance, a card is placed upon the stage announcing an extra turn. An Italian vocalist appears and starts to sing. He is received with a shower of missiles. (Edison Catalog)

Scene, interior of a street-car. A stout man enters and sits down alongside of a friend and proceeds to read a comic paper. He shows a joke in the paper to his friend, and the both laugh heartily. The friend leaves the car, and his absence is not noted by the stout man. An elderly matron takes the seat. Without looking up the stout man shoves the paper in front of the face of the old lady, thinking his friend is still there.

Shows a young black boy and a white boy in a lively set-to. They finally collapse in the centre of the ring after they have fought themselves to a stand-still. The referee proceeds to count them both out, and the seconds empty buckets of water on the fighters.

“Another exhibition by Prof. Leonidas' troop of cats and dogs. One of the dogs is shown stealing his dinner from the table in his master's absence. In order to cover his own crime, the dog places a cat on the table, where she is found when the master comes in.” (AMB Picture Catalogue, 1902)

Only 8 surviving seconds of a man getting great pleasure from smoking a cigar.

The biggest English comedy hit of the year. The scene is laid on an English estate at the edge of a pond. A couple of laborers discover, protruding from the water a pair of female legs. They hasten to the rescue, secure a bench and a long plank so as to get out over the water to the point where the legs are sticking up. Just as they complete their preparations a policeman runs up and insists on going out to the rescue of the female in distress.

A married couple faces the demands of what Theodore Roosevelt called 'the strenuous life'.

A film projectionist longs to be a detective, and puts his meagre skills to work when he is framed by a rival for stealing his girlfriend's father's pocketwatch.

A young man leers through a peephole in the wall separating two dressing rooms, but he is caught, and is humiliated by his victim.

The formal name of the peep show machine was the Mutoscope -- at least when it was manufactured by the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, which later became simply "Biograph" and is best remembered for the films directed by D.W. Griffith with G.W. "Billy" Bitzer as him cameraman. At this point, however, Griffith was a struggling stage actor and Bitzer was a leading cameraman for Biograph. This meant that he did all sorts of movies, including peep shows, and this is one of them. The title tells all and the show shows a lot as a woman exposes a shapely limb and is punished for her flouting of decent behavior.

Opens on a closeup of a baboon "playing" a violin, then cuts to a medium shot of the same. The baboon wears a white short-sleeved shirt with a loose bow tie and tweed pants. Cuts to a closeup of the baboon in a circular mask or iris effect, without the violin but with a collar around his neck and a striped kitten that he places on his shoulder. Another iris effect opens to a long shot of a stage with a painted backdrop of a river. Standing at stage left is a woman in a spangled, sleeveless dress to the knee and high laced boots, holding the leash of a dark donkey. (Library of Congress)