The Automatic Motorist.
Synopsis from "Catalogue of Kineto Film Subjects"
Walter Booth, now working for Charles Urban, remade and expanded The ? Motorist in 1911.
The synopsis follows:
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THE AUTOMATIC MOTORIST.
Weird, fantastic and full of unexpected incidents, this is a trick film betraying great ingenuity and imaginative faculty on the part of the producer. A newly-wedded couple entrust themselves to a chauffeur who is actuated by clockwork, and who takes them for a honeymoon trip through the starry firmament.
SYNOPSIS.
1-The aged inventor, proud of the product of his brain, sets the "automatic motorist" in motion and the bride and bridegroom enter a large closed motor car, the "clockwork man" taking the steering wheel.
2-The speed limit is exceeded and a policeman signals the driver to stop. He does, but the law is not allowed to follow its usual course.
3-The policeman is tied by the hands to the back of the car; a dog fastens its teeth in his coat and the two are dragged behind the car as it continues in its mad career.
4-Surmounting the dome of St Paul's the car reaches the moon, then leaps through intervening space and takes a run round the ring of Saturn.
5-A breach is made in the crust of the planet and the car enters. Within are mysterious beings, who prepare to throw their visitors into space.
6-A beneficent being appears and, waving her wand, saves the intruders from destruction.
7-The car commences the journey back to earth again. It falls rapidly through space, and on alighting is driven into mid-air by a waterspout.
8-It falls again-this time into the ocean, and the monsters of the deep glide and wriggle by the carriage windows.
9-The car returns to the surface by way of the crater of an active volcano. It shows every intention of returning to the stars, so the occupants, after attempting-vain task-to bring the "automatic motorist" to reason, decide to risk a return to earth, using their umbrellas as parachutes.
10-They seem likely to remain in mid-air, the sport of every wind that blows, until a sportsman, mistaking them for some new species of wildfowl, brings them to earth with a shot through the improvised parachutes.No. K 661
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The second version seems more interesting than the first. However, it's apparently lost.
written: 11/17/2002