Even though stop-motion animation was a staple element in the director's career and had been used significantly before in 1908, Segundo de Chomón's animation is still very creditable in the case of this film, flows at a decent pace, and works quite well in its main object. The plot also gives reason for the effects, and does not make the film a show off of tricks; while not overly original--deriving seemingly from H. G. Well's "The Invisible Man" book--it puts these gimmicks to good use and works very cleverly as a result.
The film is about an innocent man who buys a copy of "The Invisible Man". He becomes quite fascinated with the book and upon finding a recipe for invisibility in the back, he mixes up the potion, drinks it, and uses the opportunity to become a pickpocket and steal from various people. The effects take over after he becomes invisible, with stop-motion photography, wire-work and a good 'invisible' look for the man all being admirable for a film of the period. They hold up very well today, and make some interesting sequences.
The film is also definitely superior to the work Georges Méliès, who was still making trick films with no plot at this time and carrying the effects forth as a single long shot. "The Invisible Thief", unlike Méliès's work, utilizes a technique seldom used a lot in the 1900s: closeups. To display the animation of the papers and plates being stolen, the director was forced to cut in show it, and this makes the film much more elaborately structured. Another part that sticks out are the closeups used to show the book and the invisibility recipe, both of which lack continuity when compared to the long shots preceding them but are both a step toward modern storytelling. While Chomón would not stay a director in the industry long enough to continue revolutionizing (and had to let Griffith pick up where he left off eventually), he was and is still an often-overlooked figure in the development of cutting, and thus more significant than a Méliès-copier--which he is often credited as being.