The Gardarme (1922)

Overview

A strangely surreal short animated film by the beloved multi-talented artist Storm P. The film begins with live-action footage of Storm P. standing in front of a canvas where his familiar characters, the Three Little Men, come to life and walk out of a door in the picture. What follows is an animated sequence with a somewhat fragmented narrative. In the first part, a very corpulent gentleman peers hungrily through a keyhole and sees a woman feasting at a well-laid table. The middle section tells the story of a man clashing with a gendarme. In the final scene, we are in the living room of an angry woman waiting for her husband to come home. In true Storm P. style, the laws of physics are broken freely: characters can dematerialise and crawl through keyholes, be kicked all the way across town and tie their limbs up in knots. (Stumfilm. dk)