Georges Méliès (8 December 1861 – 21 January 1938), full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects. He accidentally discovered the stop trick, or substitution, in 1896, and was one of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color in his films. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality through cinematography, Méliès is sometimes referred to as the First "Cinemagician".[1]
Film career
On December 28, 1895 Méliès was present at the legendary first public screening of the Lumière brothers' films at the Grand Café in Paris. Méliès immediately offered the Lumière brothers 10,000 francs for one of their cameras, which they refused (as they had refused much larger offers from theGrévin Wax Museum and Folies Bergère). Méliès traveled to London to purchase several films and an Animatograph film projector from inventor Robert W. Paul. They were able to construct a working camera using parts from Méliès's automatons and special effect equipment. However raw film stock and film processing labs were not yet available in Paris, so Méliès had to purchase unperforated film in London and personally develop and print the films through trial and error.[2] In September 1896 he, Korsten and promoter Lucien Reulos patented the Kinètographe Robert-Houdin, an iron-caste camera-projector, which Méliès referred to as his "coffee grinder" and "machine gun" because of the noise that it made.
Scene from "A Terrible Night"
Méliès began shooting his first films in May 1896, and screening them at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin by that August. At the end of 1896 he and Reulos founded the Star Film Company. Many of his earliest films were copies and remakes of the Lumière brothers films, made to compete with the two thousand daily customers of the Grand Café.Méliès began to experiment with (and often invent) special effects that were unique to filmmaking. This began, according to Méliès's memoirs, by accident when his camera jammed in the middle of a take and "a Madeleine-Bastille bus changed into a herse and women changed into men. The substitution trick, called stop-motion, had been discovered."[2] This same stop-motion effect had already been used by Thomas Edison when depicting a decapitation in The Execution of Mary Stuart, however Méliès's film effects and unique style of film magic are his own. He first used these effects in The Vanishing Lady, in which the by then cliche magic trick of a person vanishing from the stage by means of a trap door is enhanced by the person turning into a skeleton until finally reappearing on the stage. In total Méliès made seventy-eight films in 1896.[2]
In September 1896, Méliès began to build a film studio on his property in Montreuil, just outside of Paris. The main stage building was made entirely of glass walls and ceilings so as to allow in sunlight for film exposure and its dimensions were identical to the Théâtre Robert-Houdin. Actors performed in front of a painted set as inspired by the conventions of magic and musical theater. For the remainder of his film career he would divide his time between Montreuil and the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, where he "arrived at the studio at seven am to put in a ten hour day building sets and props. At five he would change his clothes and set out for Paris in order to be at the theatre office by six to receive callers. After a quick dinner he was back to the theatre for the eight o'clock show, during which he sketched his set designs, and then returned to Montreuil to sleep. On Fridays and Saturdays he shot scenes prepared during the week, while Sundays and holidays were taken up with a theatre matinee, three film screenings, and an evening presentation that lasted until eleven-thirty."[2]
Clip from the hand-colored version of "A Trip to the Moon"
He directed 531 films between 1896 and 1914, ranging in length from one to forty minutes. In subject matter, these films are often similar to the magic theater shows that Méliès had been doing, containing "tricks" and impossible events, such as objects disappearing or changing size. These early special effects films were essentially devoid of plot. The special effects were used only to show what was possible, rather than enhance the overall film.
Méliès's early films were mostly composed of single in-camera effects, used for the entirety of the film. For example, after experimenting with multiple exposure, Méliès created his film The One Man Band in which he played seven different characters simultaneously.[3]
His most famous film is A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la Lune) made in 1902, which includes the celebrated scene in which a spaceship hits the eye of the man in the moon. Also famous is The Impossible Voyage (Le voyage à travers l'impossible) from 1904. Both of these films are about strange voyages, somewhat in the style of Jules Verne. These are considered to be some of the most important early science fiction films, although their approach is closer to fantasy.
In 1913 Georges Méliès' film company was forced into bankruptcy by the large French and American studios, and his company was bought out of receivership by Pathé Frères. Méliès did not grasp the value of his films, and with some 500 films recorded on cellulose, the French Army seized most of this stock to be melted down into boot heels during World War I. Many of the other films were sold to be recycled into new film. As a result many of his films do not exist today.
After being driven out of business, Méliès became a toy salesman at the Montparnasse station, with the assistance of funds collected by other filmmakers. Eventually Georges Méliès was awarded the Légion d'honneur (Legion of honor) which was presented to him in 1931 by Louis Lumière. [4] Lumière himself said that Méliès was the "creator of the cinematic spectacle.
Méliès died in Paris on January 21st, 1938 — just hours after the passing of Émile Cohl, another great French film pioneer — and was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.[5]
His short film Cleopatra (1899) was believed to be a lost film until a copy was discovered in 2005 in Paris.
Didnt mean to bore you with all that, but trust me: If you see the movie (and did I say I HIGHLY recommend it???) it will bring so much more meaning to it.
I honestly think this has become my favorite Christmas season movie of all time!
Grace to you,
PB
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