Production
Méliès plays the cook in the film. Special effects used include pyrotechnics and substitution splices.
The action of the film is a variation on the "trapdoor chase", a type of spectacular chase sequence particularly associated with the Lupino family of performers, including Lupino Lane. In Méliès's version, the trapdoors are designed as openings within the kitchen set: a window, an oven door, a pot, a drawer, and so on.[3] Describing the film for British exhibitors, Charles Urban's film catalogue called the result "acrobatic".
Reception and survival
With its fast-paced antics, designed to build up a hectic visual rhythm rather than to advance a narrative, The Cook in Trouble has been seen as a particularly modernist Méliès film, presaging Dadaism and Surrealism[5] as well as Mack Sennett's chase films.
According to the summary in Méliès's American catalogue, The Cook in Trouble originally ended with the cook's clothes being retrieved from the cooking pot; this ending is missing from the surviving copy of the film.
References
1. ^1 {{citation|last=Balducci|first=Anthony|title=The Funny Parts: A History of Film Comedy Routines and Gags|location=Jefferson, NC|publisher=McFarland|year=2012|pages=145–46|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pSa-fqnL7iIC&pg=PA146}}
2. ^1 {{citation|first=Wanda|last=Strauven|chapter=L'art de Georges Méliès et le futurisme italien|editor1-last=Malthête|editor1-first=Jacques|editor2-first=Michel|editor2-last=Marie|title=Georges Méliès, l'illusionniste fin de siècle?: actes du colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle, 13–22 août 1996|location=Paris|publisher=Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle|year=1997|page=343|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1n9W-3XrdPAC&pg=PA343}}