Dream of a Rarebit Fiend
1906·7 min·US
FantasyComedy
Edwin S. Porter brings Winsor McCay's wildly inventive comic strip to life in this delirious early trick film. A man overindulges in Welsh rarebit and is plunged into a cheese-fueled nightmare: the city spins around him, lampposts dance, his bed sprouts wings and sails over the rooftops of New York. Porter deploys every optical effect at his disposal — double exposures, revolving sets, superimpositions — and the result is a miniature masterpiece of hallucinatory comedy. It's a direct ancestor of every surreal dream sequence that followed, from Buster Keaton to Michel Gondry.
Edwin S. Porter brings Winsor McCay's wildly inventive comic strip to life in this delirious early trick film. A man overindulges in Welsh rarebit and is plunged into a cheese-fueled nightmare: the city spins around him, lampposts dance, his bed sprouts wings and sails over the rooftops of New York. Porter deploys every optical effect at his disposal — double exposures, revolving sets, superimpositions — and the result is a miniature masterpiece of hallucinatory comedy. It's a direct ancestor of every surreal dream sequence that followed, from Buster Keaton to Michel Gondry.
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Winsor McCay
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