Although not the first feature-length animated film, as is sometimes thought, it was the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality. The appearance of a true character distinguished it from earlier animated "trick films", such as those of Blackton and Cohl, and makes it the predecessor to later popular cartoons such as those by Walt Disney. The film was also the first to be created using keyframe animation.
Cartoon figures announce, via comic strip balloons, that they will move - and move they do, in a wildly exaggerated style. Also known as "Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics".
A hungry mosquito spots and follows a man on his way home. The mosquito slips into the room where the man is sleeping, and gets ready for a meal. His first attempts startle the man and wake him up, but the mosquito is very persistent.
A cartoonist draws faces and figures on a blackboard - and they come to life.
A bumbling sawmill employee tries to win the hand of the owner's daughter while staying out of the clutches of the mill's bullying foreman.
Jack, a little orphan, is anxious to become a sailor, and although Captain Rhines refuses to take him aboard his ship, manages to sneak in as a stowaway. When out to sea a few days, he is discovered, and is about to be disciplined, when the captain's daughter, May, intercedes. A terrific storm strikes them, and the ship is dashed to pieces. The captain, with the assistance of Jack, builds a little raft, and with little May, they set out for an island which they can hardly discern, as it is so many miles away. After drifting for many hours, they at last reach the island, which is inhabited by a savage tribe.
Larry and his wife are desperately poor—with no food. However, the butcher and grocer show up to collect money they are owed and they won't take no for an answer. They are ready to take anything and everything and eventually chase the pair up onto the room—where various stunts occur.
A widower with four grown daughters remarries and brings his new wife home to meet them. The girls set out to make life as difficult as possible for their new mother.
A traveler stays the night at a rural inn, but gets no rest as he is tormented by various spectres and mysterious happenings.
Lillian Travers, a New York heiress, pops down to Florida to surprise her fiancé, Fred Cassadene, the house doctor at a prominent Saint Augustine hotel. The surprise, however, is Lillian's when she finds Fred in a series of compromising situations with a certain wealthy widow staying there. When she can take no more, Lillian discovers a box forgotten at an old curiosity shop in which lies a hundred-year-old secret: a vial of four rare and exotic African seeds that promises to transform whoever swallows one from a woman to a man or vice versa.
A smoker falls asleep, and two mischievious fairies play with his pipe. He discovers this, and imprisons them in a cigar box. He removes a flower from the box, which contains a fairy smoking a cigarette. Next, he leaves briefly while his smoking paraphenalia clears itself from the table and the flower reassembles itself into a cigar. He lights the cigar, then breaks a bottle containing the fairy, who interacts with him in various ways reeling from his cigar smoke, building a bonfire that he extinguishes, etc.
A government official staying in a hotel puts some important secret papers in the hotel safe. A ring of spies out to get the papers manages to steal them from the safe, and a lady government agent enlists the help of the hotel's bumbling bellhop in getting back the papers and breaking up the spy ring.
The Rent Collector is a 1921 American silent comedy film featuring Larry Semon & Oliver Hardy.
That the way to a man's heart is by means of his appetite, is strikingly shown. Mother-in-law comes to visit the newly wedded couple and finds the young man somewhat discontented. It is no wonder, for his wife is so engrossed in her "art," although only an amateur, that she forgets all about cooking dinner and such like trivialities.
This domestic comedy depicts a woman who stops her husband's gambling habit by having her cousin stage a fake police raid on the weekly poker game.
A slapstick comedy directed by Larry Semon and starring Hughie Mack & Patsy De Forest.
Larry falls afoul of wanted criminal Gentleman Joe, who runs a saloon full of tough guys and gunslingers.
While stopping at the Bronzegilt Hotel, Slick and Slim, two high-class and well-dressed burglars, overhear Baroness Vodka tell the manager she wishes to place her million-dollar box of jewels in the hotel vault, which is set into the wall at the end of the hallway. The manager accordingly escorts her to the big safe, and she watches him place the little box inside. Next morning the manager goes to cash a check for the Baroness, and finds the whole vault has completely vanished.
Released in five parts (The Persecution of the Children of Israel by the Egyptians, Forty Years in the Land of Midian, The Plagues of Egypt and the Deliverance of the Hebrews, The Victory of Israel, The Promised Land), 4 December 1909 to 19 February 1910. A Vitagraph advertisement in the Moving Picture World (31 Dec. 1909) refers to The Life of Moses as a "Biblical Film-de-Luxe". It is preserved in the Library of Congress collection.
A rich libertine leaves all his money to a college girl who had refused his advances. The ensuing scandal makes her retire to a small town, where she meets the dead man's son.
