On the Roofs
1897 film by Georges Méliès
On the Roofs (French: Sur les toits (cambrioleurs et gendarmes)) is an 1897 French short silent comedy film directed by Georges Méliès. The film was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 100 in its catalogues. The film features 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 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 roofs 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.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “On the Roofs” is 1897 film by Georges Méliès. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Roofs, film and Georges, not as a finished interpretation.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2368334. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1897 and 1959.
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This entry incorporates text from “On the Roofs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.