''Un malheur n'arrive jamais seul'', sold in the United States as ''Misfortune Never Comes Alone'' and in Britain as ''Accidents Never Happen Singly'', is a 1903 French short

silent film A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, w ...

Georges Méliès Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès ( , ; 8 December 1861 – 21 January 1938) was a French magic (illusion), magician, toymaker, actor, and filmmaker. He led many technical and narrative developments in the early days of film, cinema, primarily in th ...

. It was sold by Méliès's

Star Film Company The Manufacture de Films pour Cinématographes, often known as Star Film, was a French film production company run by the illusionist and film director Georges Méliès. History On 28 December 1895, Méliès attended the celebrated first publi ...

and is numbered 451–452 in its catalogues. Méliès plays the lamplighter in the film, which was made in the winter of 1902–03. The

advertising column An advertising column or Morris column (, ) is a cylindrical outdoor sidewalk structure with a characteristic style that is used for advertising and other purposes. They are common throughout Germany including its capital Berlin, where the first 1 ...

seen in the film includes two ads for Méliès himself, and one for

Menier Chocolate The Menier Chocolate company () is a French chocolate manufacturing business founded in 1816 as a Pharmacology, pharmaceutical manufacturer in Paris, at a time when chocolate was used as a medicinal product and was only one part of the overall bu ...

. The film's special effects are created with

substitution splice The substitution splice or stop trick is a cinematic special effect in which filmmakers achieve an appearance, disappearance, or transformation by altering one or more selected aspects of the mise-en-scène between two shots while maintaining t ...

References

External links

* {{Authority control French black-and-white films Films directed by Georges Méliès French silent short films Articles containing video clips