The ‘?’ Motorist Is Unpronounceable But Fun
Note: This is the thirty-eighth in a series of historical/critical essays examining the best in film from each year. Essentially, I am watching films from the beginning of cinematic history that interest me and/or hold some critical or cultural impact. My personal, living list of favorites is being created at Mubi, showcasing five films per year. All this being explained, what follows is an examination of my third favorite 1906 film, THE ‘?’ MOTORIST, directed by Walter R. Booth.
THE ‘?’ MOTORIST, besides having a grammatically and conventionally impossible name, is a distillation of the trick film into its purest form, evolved as far as it could go by the time it was released in 1906. Already, trick filmmakers, including THE ‘?’ MOTORIST director himself, Walter R. Booth, had married the outright spectacle of their filmic tricks with more elaborate scenarios, characters, and especially longer film length. But this film, at just over two minutes long, stays dedicated to its gag. THE ‘?’ MOTORIST is probably one of the last successful trick films of its type, and preceded an entire industry shift away from the tradition of simplicity it carried.
While Booth, and many others, wouldn’t be left in the dust along with their trick films for some time, their evolution of the trick film was short-lived. Booth would remake THE ‘?’ MOTORIST as THE AUTOMATIC MOTORIST (a 1911 favorite of mine I will write about eventually), and demonstrated just how different movies were after only five years. However, the extent to which trick films could grow reached its limit, as focused on their titular tricks as they were. The inability or lack of desire to create stronger comedic chops, characterizations, or plots no longer flew as films became more complex and could not rely solely on “magical” moments that had been seen before.
This all being said, THE ‘?’ MOTORIST (generally read/pronounced as THE ‘Q’ MOTORIST) was the culmination of the extremely short trick film into a solid, tight experience with very little downtime or, really, standout faults. Booth accomplished everything he set out to do with THE ‘?’ MOTORIST, and did so with considerable comedic and visual aplomb.
The film follows a “motorist” couple that, inexplicably, has a magic car. After running over a traffic cop trying to stop them, the pair take the car straight up the side of a building and into the sky. In my last film essay, I praised the ability of DREAM OF A RAREBIT FIEND (1906) to create probably the most convincing flight sequence put to film by that time; THE ‘?’ MOTORIST is probably just behind it. The double exposure shot of the flight transitions into a brilliant, charming little miniature set that shows the car driving along the heavens, onto a smiling moon reminiscent of Georges Méliès’ vision in A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902), and around the ring of Saturn before crashing down to Earth. The vehicle’s extreme versatility is demonstrated one more time as it transforms into a horse and carriage in order to confound the authorities, and back into a car as the bonkers pair drives away.
THE ‘?’ MOTORIST’s Méliès connection cannot be understated, in spite of every trick film’s reliance on many of the pioneer’s innovations and stylistic hallmarks. But the film’s scenario, in which a fantastical car takes its passengers through Earthly and extraterrestrial chaos, greatly resembles a few Méliès films of the past few years, such as THE IMPOSSIBLE VOYAGE (1904) and AN ADVENTUROUS AUTOMOBILE TRIP (1905). The man in the moon wasn’t invented by Méliès, but considering the popularity of the image from A TRIP TO THE MOON, it’s safe to assume films that approximated the face in the moon were trying to cash in on that masterwork as often as possible. Indeed, THE ‘?’ MOTORIST has been cited as a British attempt to bring Méliès’ style into popularity in England, under domestic film production of course. It was also one of Booth’s last films produced by film pioneer R.W. Paul. When Booth went to work under Charles Urban, his films eventually became more ambitious and less Méliès-like as the years went on.
THE ‘?’ MOTORIST is perfectly middle-of-the-road entertainment, a fitting descriptor for the third of my five favorite films of 1906. It’s plainly entertaining, and while Booth didn’t do anything ambitiously new, the film represented the refinement of his skills and tricks into a well-executed formula that he could execute with assured precision. It may have been the apex of a prior film era, but it was released as that era was coming to its end, and therefore feels underwhelming with the incredible work being made ahead of the revolutionary time to come.
Make sure to catch up on and keep up with all of my essays on my favorite films here.
