Georges Méliès

  • Georges Méliès – Le Château hanté AKA The Haunted Castle (1897)

    Georges Méliès1891-1900FranceHorrorSilentThe Birth of Cinema

    Quote:
    A man dressed in red is ushered into an antechamber in a Castle and offered a seat. When he tried to sit down the chair moves to the other side of the room causing the man to fall on the floor. Standing up he strides to the chair but on trying to lift it a Spector materializes in the chair, arises and challenges the man. The man pulls out his sword and lunges at the Spector but it changes into a skeleton. Seeing the change the man tried to grab the skeleton but it changes into an armor clad guard. The man attempts to move the guard but a devil appears and waves the man away. The man recoils from the devil and tries to leave but the Spector reappears. Both it and the devil frighten the man from the antechamber.Read More »

  • Georges Méliès – The Movies Begin – Disc 4 – The Magic of Méliès (1904 – 1908)

    1901-1910ExperimentalGeorges MélièsSilentThe Birth of Cinema

    The Magic of Méliès
    Director: Georges Méliès
    Country: France
    Year: 1904-1908
    Tribute is paid to the screen’s first special effects wizard in this special collection of marvelously restored prints. In addition to more than a dozen of his early trompes l’oeil – such as Untamable Wiskers, Tchin-Chao, the Chinese Conjurer, and The Mermaid – this volume boasts the illuminating documentary, Georges Méliès, Cinema Magician and a rare hand-tinted print of the fantastic spectacle An Impossible Voyage.Read More »

  • Georges Méliès – Le monstre aka The Monster (1903)

    1901-1910FranceGeorges MélièsShort FilmSilentThe Birth of Cinema

    Plot Synopsis:
    An Egyptian prince has lost his beloved wife and he has sought a dervish who dwells at the base of the sphinx. The prince promises him a vast fortune if the dervish will only give him the opportunity of gazing once more upon the features of his wife. The dervish accepts the offer. He brings in from a neighboring tomb the receptacle containing the remains of the princess. He opens it and removes the skeleton, which he places upon the ground close beside him. Then, turning to the moon and raising his arms outstretched toward it, he invokes the moon to give back life to her who is no more. The skeleton begins to move about, becomes animated, and arises. The dervish puts it upon a bench and covers it with a white linen; a masque conceals its ghostly face.Read More »

  • Georges Méliès – L’ Impressionniste fin de siècle (1899)

    1891-1900FranceGeorges MélièsSilentThe Birth of Cinema

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    Although Georges Méliès’ The Conjuror (L’ Impressionniste fin de siècle) was was one of his earliest movies, it’s also an excellently realized example of Méliès’ basic style of cinematic magic.

    The Conjuror revisits a scene that Méliès had explored before, and is basically a cinematic adaptation of the traditional magic trick “making the assistant disappear”. Méliès first presented this scene in his 1896 film The Vanishing Lady, which used simple camera stop-substitution to achieve the affect (no motion involved, and no in-camera dissolve). Méliès revisited the idea in his 1898 film The Magician, which made further use of the substitution effect, which by that time was only one of many effects that Méliès was using in his films.Read More »

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