Here the Spanish filmmaker Segundo de Chomon once again borrows the special effects from Melies-except here, instead of a regular magic show as is typical of Melies, Chomon uses the simple stop-trick effect to tell a bizarre story about some thieves stealing a vacuum cleaner and using it to perform their thievery. It's simple and unsophisticated, and a decent feature. I'm sure audiences, though not fascinated by the effects anymore, laughed at the people being sucked up, and the ending part where the original owners of the vacuum come back for revenge adds a nice twist. I think I'd recommend seeing it, as it's probably one of the directer's better short films.

"The Vacuum Cleaner" is a hilarious film considering that it was made in 1908 and it still stands up very well today. Segundo de Chomón has crafted a funny little film that is quite clever.The film begins with a couple guys pushing a HUGE hand-cranked vacuum cleaner down the street. They leave it for a moment and two jerks find the machine and decide to have fun--sucking all sorts of objects and even people into the machine! It's done through stop-motion--stopping the machine as the objects seem to be pulled into the giant vacuum hose and then restarting the camera after the object or person has been taken off-camera. It's a crude effect by today's standards but it's done very well here. It makes for a cute little film that ends appropriately. Quite good and worth watching.

Segundo de Chomon was the big guns when it came to doing Melies films and stealing his audience -- with a twist. With Melies, what you usually got with the magic tricks was a magician. That, however, was a limited number of pieces and if you wanted to use those tricks -- particularly stop-motion disappearance -- you had to place them in a context, changing the magic from the point of the piece to the grammar.Although the line of grammar that de Chomon invented was a dead end -- the techniques would remain -- he executed them with more variety that Melies. Here a couple of thieves steal a street vacuum cleaner and use it to pilfer all manners of goods and people in a variety of settings, including some on the street, as opposed to Melies' controlled, set-bound pieces. It's no more than a variation, but a highly amusing one at that.