DRAMA. A couple at a long dinner table, attended by servants, say goodnight to their child. When the child has left, the couple excitedly notice a comet through the window. At an observatory, an aged astronomer looks at the comet through his telescope. Meanwhile the small girl is being put to bed by her nurse. The child suddenly sees the comet through the window, and calls excitedly. Her mother rushes in and, bundling the child up, rushes out. All the family and servants, with the nurse and child, climb into a car, followed by more servants in another, and flee to a cave in the hills. They arrive at the cave exhausted, and all rush to drink from a small waterfall. The comet is seen passing round a model of the globe. The garage from which the family have just fled collapses in ruins, killing a servant left behind. A miser is seen counting his gold, going to the window, he is overcome when the tail of the comet passes, and the gold left on the table is burnt completely away. Houses, farms and towns are seen consumed with the fire left by the tail of the comet. The family and the others who had fled with them, including a Red Cross worker, leave their cave to see the comet passing into the distance. They return to the city to find it in ruins. As the others sit dejectedly, the father of the family looks at the desolation through binoculars (535ft).
No such film appears in any French catalogue, but the description matches exactly that for a film called THE COMET, given in Phil Hardy's The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction. Hardy says that the film is American, made by Kalem in 1910, 11 minutes long, and that it was distributed in the UK by Kineto.
However, I can find no certain record of such a Kalem film. It is not listed in the American Film Index nor in the Library of Congress 1894-1912 catalogue. The American Film Institute catalogue lists a 1910 film called THE COMET, made by Edison, just 180 feet long and starring Anna Held. This appears to have been a different film made for a Ziegfeld stage production (in which Held played Halley's comet). The IMDb has a record for a 1910 THE COMET, which it gives as production company Edison, producer [sic] Kalem - a typical IMDB muddle. Ron Magliozzi's Treasures from the Film Archives says that it is a British film with prints in London and Denmark, which I am assuming is a misinterpretation of secondary evidence.
So, were there two US THE COMET films? And what primary source might there be for Kalem having produced it? It sounds so unlike a Kalem production. I'm away from any library sources at the moment and I'm a bit stuck. The film is due to be screened at next month's Bologna film festival, and any information would help those researching for the festival catalogue.
