And the Villain Still Pursued Her; or, the Author's Dream

A pulp writer falls asleep at his desk and dreams his own melodrama: the heroine, the villain, a shot to the head, a chase, and the whole machinery of the stage played faster than any stage could manage. J. Stuart Blackton made it for Vitagraph in 1906 as a parody of the form the movies were about to make their own, and in six minutes it burns through clichés the movies would then reuse for decades. Paul Panzer is the villain.