Best Movies of 1907

A traveler stays the night at a rural inn, but gets no rest as he is tormented by various spectres and mysterious happenings.

As an older man and a youth are eating at the table, the older man decides to amuse himself by using pepper to make the boy sneeze. Later, the boy retaliates by sneaking into the older man's room and putting pepper in his handkerchief, hairbrush, and clothing. But things quickly get out of hand when the sneezing that results begins to disrupt the whole town.

A nicely-dressed man is riding on a bicycle. When he parks it a hobo quickly steals it, but he is clearly new at riding. He cannot manage to steer in a straight line, and it is not long before he becomes quite a hazard to pedestrians and to others in his path.

Polichinelle the servant (called Harlequin in the English language version) rescues his girlfriend from a gang of decadent aristocrats, who have transformed her into a mechanical doll.

The story centers on a gregarious but rather undependable man whose attentions to a young gypsy woman lead to complications for them both.

A soldier with a fur hat hides in a closet.

John, who loves the bottle a little too much, is one of a group of sightseers. Too drunk to follow the party, the reeling drunkard remains on the site of a ruin where he starts having hallucinations.

A man who fears the influenza microbe buys an antiseptic spray from a pharmacist. On his way home, he insists on spraying everyone he encounters, including the police.

The first adaptation of Lew Wallace's novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

An inept marching band heads off to the competition, and then celebrates their surprising victory.

Dramatization of the real-life shooting of Stanford White by Harry K. Thaw.

An illustrator draws some sketches at lightning speed. He first illustrates how he can turn a written word into a sketch of that word.

Many demonstrations of the art of Jiu Jitsu are given, and as evidence that this is not a passing fad intended only for the amusement of the public there is illustrated in very thrilling manner how several footpads follow two girls and then in a deserted section of the road make an attack, which is successfully foiled and the perpetrators taken into custody. Splendid action and good photographic quality. (Gaumont catalogue)

Two men box in a comedic manner, with the film opening as one man in a cap punches the other and then ducks behind him.

Boireau's father keeps trying to apprentice him to a different trade. Each time, the youngster annoys the customers and destroys the goods and property.

With a posted prize for the winner of "A superb son-in-law" a bunch of middle-aged women turn out for the obstacle course race in this variation on the typical chse comedy of the era.

Behind the elderly husband's back, the lovers kiss and go off together. But is he unaware of their actions. No! So she swears that her husband is mad and as I'mm locked away in a padded cell. That, however, will not end the matter.

A soldier, and his sergeant are in love with the same woman. The soldier in a moment of anger attacks the sergeant who for this gesture makes him imprison. The war council's judgment is immediate: deportation to military prison. In the military prison we see shocked and threatened men who are punished with torture and other brutal rites if they do not follow orders. The soldier, after a plot that took place inside the prison, is thrown into a silo that if it had not been for the help of a friend he would have died. The two men try to escape but both die.

A young female boarding house tenant becomes an unwanted object of male attention.

Despite what you may read on IMDb and elsewhere, Enrico Caruso does not appear in this film though it was mimed to a recording by Caruso. Mendel’s system utilized prerecorded commercial recordings of famous artists lip-synched by look-alike actors during film shooting. The music is the sextet Chi mi frena in tal momento from Act Two of Gaetano Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor which premiered in 1835.

A lady and her husband leave their home and go to a fashionable millinery, where the lady buys a beautiful hat. From there they go to a restaurant and seat themselves for a meal. The waiter, in serving the soup, stumbles, with the result that he spills the contents of the tureen on the lady's new hat. She is mortified and enraged, and her husband immediately halls a cab and takes her home, where on reaching her room she throws the hat to the ground and falls to weeping. A servant enters, and seeing the mined headgear on the ground, adopts it as her own. She fixes it up to suit her taste and is next seen wearing it as she meets her lover, the policeman. Together they go to a park and seat themselves on a bench, the servant placing her hat beside her. While the couple are busy, a very stout gentleman comes along, seats himself on the hat and proceeds to read his newspaper.

An energetic man steals kisses from passing ladies, until bystanders give chase.

The wife buys a magnetic belt for her husband to give him more vigor but the power of it makes him pounce on the women with kisses. The belt passes from one to the other with unexpected effects.

Various scenes of local color in Hawaii.

Scenes of Theodore Roosevelt at the Jamestown Exposition in Norfolk, Virginia, in April and June, 1907, participating in Jamestown's tercentennial celebration on April 26, its opening day, and later on Georgia Day, June 10.

A gendarme is so tired that he takes off his boots and lies down to rest. A thief who sees the boots runs away but they give off such a bad smell that wherever he passes it causes people to faint from the stench.

The police detect a gang of currency counterfeiters and when they go to arrest them they defend themselves by shooting, starting a persecution to the death.

A terrorist group plans to kill the governor. They kidnap his wife. The police look for them and as they come out of their lair they do justice by killing them one by one. But another prepares a bomb.

It starts off with Roman soldiers in chariots battling fur-clad savages with pointy sticks, moves on to the Eighth Century, then leaps to King John.

After burglars break into a home, lay out a man, and steal valuable merchandise, the police are after them. No part of the force is more relentless than the dogs who pursue the thieves.

A poacher hunts rabbits with his youngest daughter. The eldest daughter is courted by the guard and on one occasion this guard kills the hunter. The little daughter takes revenge on him.

A view of Haleiwa via the Oahu railroad.

On their wedding night, the newlyweds are ready to go to bed with the ceremony of taking off their clothes, the bride, and the groom wanting to see what he has not seen yet.

....and therefore a man leaves the building carrying an umbrella, which promptly blows away. Since no one in Paris has ever seen anything like this before, a dozen people, including a man hobbling along on a a crutch, chase the thing for kilometers -- I had written 'miles' but this is a French comedy.

A workman carries a piece of wood from a lumberyard to a work site. Along the way, he wreaks havoc.

While one man holds a gun on him, the other signs a statement that he will dance a cake-walk whenever the other insists; which means, when he is pointing a gun at him.

As a result of a stagecoach hold-up and other crimes, Buck Brady has become known locally as the "King of Bandits". The sheriff posts a $1000 reward for Brady, dead or alive. Soon a full-scale effort is underway to capture the bandit king.

A motorist has a breakdown at the entrance of a town where they have never seen a car before, and they ask each other for help to see what it is that has appeared.

Christy Mathewson showing his ball skills.

Some people row a boat up to a town, set fire to it, then row back to their own place, amidst a gun battle.

The opening shows a colored nursemaid in the park with baby carriage, and seated on a bench receives the attention of several smart colored men who admire her greatly and endeavor to make her acquaintance. But the dusky belle is coy and declines to make the acquaintance of any of them, until one more fortunate than the rest is invited to a seat on the bench with her, and a most pronounced flirtation takes place between the lady and her beau. (Selig catalog)

Ships of foreign countries and the U.S. Atlantic Fleet participate in the international naval review which marks the opening of the Jamestown Exposition April 26, 1907. TR, with his family and guests, had traveled from Washington aboard the Presidential yacht Mayflower.

A combination of the story of Goldlocks and the Three Bears with the true story of how Teddy Roosevelt spared a bear cub after killing its mother while hunting, an event which led to the popularization of the teddy bear. Goldilocks goes to sleep in the bears' home after watching six teddy bears dance and do acrobatics, viewing them through a knothole in the wall. When she is awoken by the returning bear family, they give chase through the woods, but she runs to the aid of the Old Rough Rider, who saves her.

Native troops in what look like US Army uniforms do formation practicing with rifles in bayonet maneuver.

A professor sprays people with 'galvanic fluid', and unleashes pent-up energy. Displays an early use of over-cranking and under-cranking.

The cyclist is dispatched upon an important errand, and his humorous and alarming adventures by the way form the subject of this series. Misadventure follows misadventure with great frequency, but the cyclist comes up smiling every time, mounts his machine, and again resumes his journey. Accidents which would maim or kill an ordinary mortal serve only to spur him on to fresh exertions in a mad search for physical inconveniences and dangers, which always present themselves. (Picture World)

A homeless man comes to the rescue of a rich couple who reward him with a bank note.

The pursuit of a highwayman taking a message to a knight.