On the Roof is a 1897

1897 in film

-Events:* 125 people died during a film screening at the Charity Bazaar in Paris after a curtain catches on fire from the ether used to fuel the projector lamp.* Mitchell and Kenyon go into a film-making partnership...

 French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 short

Short subject

A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...

 black-and-white

Black-and-white

Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...

 silent

Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

 comedy film

Comedy film

Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

, directed by Georges Méliès

Georges Méliès

Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...

, featuring the director as a bumbling policeman attempting to apprehend two criminals on the roof of an apartment building. "Every second of this," "highly successfully staged" "minute of film," according to Europa Film Treasues, "is used to construct the character's action and movements" and "made use of the theatre's three-dimensional decor," which "the competition quickly copied." The film was included in the Will Day collection bought by French Minister of Cultural Affairs André Malraux

André Malraux

André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...

 from collector Wilfrid Day in 1959 and preserved in the French Film Archives.

Synopsis

A woman calls for help from her window as two burglars climb over the rooves into her house, tie her up and throw her out of the window. A policeman hears her cries and climbs onto the roof only to be trapped by the burglars before they make their escape.