One of the best films i have seen

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Here is Georges Melies doing his thing, dredging up the mythical figure of the Wandering Jew, who supposedly refused to give Christ a drink of water as he went to his death. He is forced to wander eternally with the guilt of his actions weighing on him. Of course, his being a Jew throws in the anti-Semitic element. He is damned and, of course, it's the old, "Jews killed Christ" thing that allowed people to treat others with hatred and foist death on their populace.

It's hard to really understand this film unless you turn on the optional commentary track. It begins with an old Jewish man struggling as he walks. You learn, through the use of a double-exposure, that the man witnessed Christ being led to the crucifixion and refused him water. Now, he's cursed to wander through eternity--and there is no let up to his misery. He sees what he's done repeatedly, is attacked by Satan and the elements conspire against him--all in repayment for his sin.While the set appears very crudely done (almost quaint), this is the norm for 1904--and that is why it all appears very stagy. But, it makes nice use of the double-exposure and is decent for its time.I wondered, however, if this was film was perhaps based on some folk tale (I've never heard of it). So I checked and found the story began sometime around the 13th century and the man was cursed to do this until Christ's second coming. Perhaps this story was created to explain the displaced Jewish people (who had no homeland for almost 1900 years) or was in some way antisemitic--I have no idea. But here in the States, it's a story I would assume very, very few would recognize.

It is interesting that the Catholic -- but pro-Dreyfus -- Méliès would make this allegorical film about a symbolic Jew, played by Méliès himself, wandering throughout the ages, plagued for eternity by his complicity in the death of Christ. On the surface, the film isn't anti-Semitic so much as it is illustrative of a tenet in the Catholic faith going back to the Medieval period, still very much in force at the end of the 19th century. This dogma did led to widespread persecution of Jews in Europe. The Roman Church has officially abandoned this policy in the 21st century, but in 1904, Méliès' Jew appears doomed to wander forever through his personal hell, with the spirit world beyond as resigned to keeping him on his feet as society itself, though in this case society is absent. Méliès deals with a social phenomenon as a sacred one, creating a cognitive dissonance in modern viewers. Nevertheless, the lightning storm in the ruin is impressively achieved through matting and some rapid editing on the matte, a rare effect in a Méliès title.

To the modern eye, this is obviously a trick film made with double exposure; and Melies, in his role as the Wandering Jew, is quite over the top as he wanders through a field of hard stones, having dreams and visions of Christ on his way to Calvary, the devil tormenting him and of the Mother of God. To a Frenchman of the era, who quite probably saw this film at a fairground -- a prime audience for Melies in this era -- it is simply and purely a movie of faith --- and a certain amount of anti-Semitism, too.Still, for the time frame it is quite a beautiful, what with Melies ' carefully painted backgrounds lending a three-dimensional air to the film. And for those of us who love Melies' work under any circumstances, it is a temptation to go back to the Europa Film Archives website and look at it again right now.