1898. Anno Tre: Vues Scientifiques: Science and Science Fiction. Fantastic Scenes: Méliès and the Art of the Marvellous.

Une scène d’hypnotisme, I. Catalogue Lumière Vue N° 990. Délire réel ou simulé d’une femme. Opérateur: inconnu. Date: [1897] - [décembre 1898]. Lieu: France. Personnes: Lina de Ferkel. Projections: Programmation d'Effroi ! Scène d'hypnotisme le 2 juin 1901 à Lyon (France) (Le Progrès, 4 juin 1901). Eléments filmiques: négatif Lumière. Pays: France. Genre: spectacle. Sujet: comédien. Séries: info-five-32, Lina de Ferkel

Introduce Mariann Lewinsky.
    Musical interpretation: Stephen Horne on the grand piano and other instruments.
    Viewed at Sala Mastroianni, Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato, Anno Tre, 28 June 2018.

CAPITOLO 2: VUES SCIENTIFIQUES, SCIENZA E FANTASCIENZA
CHAPTER 2: VUES SCIENTIFIQUES, SCIENCE AND SCIENCE FICTION

Mariann Lewinsky: "Albert Londe (1858–1917) was an important medical researcher, chronophotographer and pioneer in X-ray photography. He used a camera with nine (and later twelve) lenses to make sequential photographs of movements, explosions and ocean waves. A colleague and collaborator of Marey, Charcot and Richer, he worked for many years at the Salpêtrière hospital and published influential collections of chronophotographs."

"The brilliant surgeon and immunologist Eugène-Louis Doyen (1859–1916) used cinematography very early on for educational purposes, and in July 1898 presented three films (among them Manoeuvre du lit opératoire and Hystérectomie abdominale) to the British Medical Society. He produced a collection of about sixty surgery films, with Clément-Maurice and Ambroise-François Parnaland as collaborators. When Parnaland secretly distributed some of the films, with copies turning up at fairground shows, Doyen successfully prosecuted him. It is extraordinary that we know the name of the young woman who appears – or does she act? – in the Scènes de Hypnotisme I and II, Lumière Catalogue nos. 990-991. She was a painter’s model and a professional performer of Poses passionnelles, or Emotional Postures “responding in hypnosis to musical or verbal suggestions. She is able to fall asleep and wake up by herself ” (says her business card). Parapsychologist Albert de Rocha’s book on musical suggestions (1900), designed in pure Art Nouveau style by Alphonse Mucha, includes her portraits by Nadar. She lived in Paris, 84 Rue des Écoles, and the Lumière Catalogue gives away her unconceivable name: Lina de Ferkel. ‘Ferkel’ is German for piglet. Did she know?" Mariann Lewinsky

"12 pictures of naked athlete by Albert Londe. Another pioneer of capturing human motion was Albert Londe (1858-1917). Londe built a camera with 9 lenses and used the camera to study the movement of his patients (La Hôpital de la Salpêtrière in Paris)." From: Art of Movement II, 30 December 2014. https://baswaramursyid.wordpress.com/

FEU D’ARTIFICE. Francia, 1898 Regia: Albert Londe. 35 mm. L.: 40 m. Bn Da: CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée. – AA: Non-fiction. Reduced, expressive, pure vision. Motif: fireworks.

MARCHE DE L’HOMME N. 1. Francia, 1898 Regia: Albert Londe. T. alt.: Démarche pathologique, piste de la Salpêtrière. 35 mm. L.: 15 m. Bn Da: CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée. – AA: Non-fiction. Stark, reduced, basic observation. Motif: Walking.

From: Thierry Lefebvre: "Les débuts cinématographiques du docteur Doyen". De Mémoire de Médecin. Vol. 63. La Revue du Practicien, 20 May 2013.

[MANOEUVRE DU LIT OPÉRATOIRE] Francia, 1898 Regia: Louis Doyen T. copia: Eine schwierige Behandlung. F.: Clément-Maurice, Ambroise-Françoise Parnaland. Prod.: Louis Doyen 35 mm Da: Filmarchiv Austria. – AA: Non-fiction. A straight record of a surgical procedure. Associations run to torture and surrealism.

Eugène Louis Doyen (1859–1916). Chanteclair, n° 92, décembre 1911, p. 3. Dessinateur: Georges Villa. http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histmed/image?CIPN20051. Collection BIU Santé Médecine

[OPÉRATION CHIRURGICALE DU DOCTEUR DOYEN: HYSTÉRECTOMIE ABDOMINALE, ABLATION DE LA TUMEUR] Francia, 1898 Regia: Eugène Louis Doyen F.: Clément-Maurice, Ambroise-Françoise Parnaland. Int.: Eugène Louis Doyen. Prod.: Eugène Louis Doyen 35 mm. L.: 112 m. D.: 6’ Da: CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée. – AA: Non-fiction. The camera look and camera smile of the surgeon is unsettling as he is conducting a dangerous operation. Many of us were certainly reminded of trick films of Méliès with similar situations of disjecta membra.

UNE SCÈNE DE HYPNOTISME, I Catalogo Lumière n . 990, Francia, 1897 o 1898 Int.: Lina de Ferkel 35 mm Da: Institut Lumière. – AA: A spectacle with a trained performer. A stark and haunting trance scene, real or staged.

.

Une scène d’hypnotisme, II. Catalogue Lumière Vue N° 991. Délire réel ou simulé d’une femme. Opérateur: inconnu. Date: [1897] - [décembre 1898]. Lieu: France. Personnes: Lina de Ferkel. Projections: Programmation d'Effroi ! Scène d'hypnotisme le 2 juin 1901 à Lyon (France) (Le Progrès, 4 juin 1901). Eléments filmiques: négatif Lumière. Pays: France. Personnes identifiées: Lina de Ferkel. Genre: spectacle. Sujet: comédien. Séries: info-five-32, Lina de Ferkel

UNE SCÈNE DE HYPNOTISME, II Catalogo Lumière n . 991, Francia, 1897 o 1898 Int.: Lina de Ferkel 35 mm Da: Institut Lumière. – AA: A spectacle with a trained performer. A scene of histrionic trance. Associations run to early cinema acting styles with exaggerated gestures.

L'Utilité des rayons X.

L'Utilité des rayons X.

L'Utilité des rayons X.

L’UTILITÉ DES RAYONS X. Francia, 1898 Regia: Gaston Breteau Int.: Gaston Breteau. Prod.: Léon Gaumont et Cie DCP. D.: 1’. Bn Da: Lobster. – "A l'octroi, une dame se présente, son embonpoint parait suspect. Les douaniers la soumettent aux rayons X. De nombreux produits de contrebande sont découverts et la délinquante est déshabillée malgré sa résistance." (Forum des images). – AA: Fiction. A thief with his loot hidden inside his clothes is arrested with the help of X-rays. We fret over the transit controls today, but they knew how to use X-ray at the customs already 120 years ago.

CAPITOLO 4: SCÈNES FANTASTIQUES: MÉLIÈS E L’ARTE DEL MERAVIGLIOSO
CHAPTER 4: FANTASTIC SCENES: MÉLIÈS AND THE ART OF THE MARVELLOUS

Mariann Lewinsky: "Georges Méliès made twenty-seven titles in 1898; about ten of them are known to exist. The seven screened in our section are marvellous: a beautiful phantom ride, a cleverly reconstructed actuality (of the USS battleship Maine which sank on 15 February 1898) with some live goldfish and five transformations or trick scenes – which Méliès himself preferred to call scènes fantastiques. They are not only fantastic, astonishing and inventive, they radiate a unique charm of exuberance, of fun and bravura that makes them more enjoyable than anything else in the 1898 strand. And also more enjoyable than most of Méliès’ later productions. Theirs is the irretrievable charm of perfection achieved for the first time in a new thing. These films were screened on Sunday nights in the Théâtre Robert-Houdin. It is important to repeat on every occasion that Méliès did not bring theater or fiction to the cinema. It is the other way round; he put cinematography at the service of the theatre, as he wrote in 1906 (in Les Vues cinématographiques), and for him it was a means to expand the limits of his Art of the Marvellous as he wrote in 1926 (in En marge de l’histoire du cinématographe). Using cinematography he accomplished tricks like replacing Christ on the Cross with seductive Jehanne d’Alcy, the Greek sculptor Pygmalion chasing a hobbling skirt (the recalcitrant lower half of Galatea) and himself disappearing, leaving a little wisp of smoke in the air." Mariann Lewinsky

Georges Méliès: Panorama pris d'un train en marche (Star Film 151, 1898). Photo: Wikipédia.

PANORAMA PRIS D’UN TRAIN EN MARCHE / Panorama from Top of Moving Train / Panorama from Top of a Moving Train. Francia, 1898. Regia: Georges Méliès. Prod.: Star Film (n. 151). DCP. Da: Lobster Films. – AA: Non-fiction. A phantom ride.

Georges Méliès: Le Magicien (Star Film 153, 1898). Photo: Wikipédia.

LE MAGICIEN / The Magician. Francia, 1898. Regia: Georges Méliès. Prod.: Star Film (n. 153). DCP. Da: Lobster Films. – "Un magicien fait apparaître une table, une boîte, dans laquelle il entre et ressort déguisé en Pierrot. Sur la table apparaissent ensuite des couverts et des mets. Puis tout disparaît et le magicien porte alors un costume antique, après avoir touché un homme habillé à la mode des derniers siècles. Il sculpte ensuite un buste de femme qui devient vivant, n'arrive pas à toucher une statue de femme qui change sans arrêt de place, et se fait enfin botter le derrière par l'homme de l'ancien temps." (Wikipédia). – AA: Fiction, trick film, of rapid and fantastic metamorphoses.

Georges Méliès: Pygmalion et Galathée (Star Film 156), 1898.

PYGMALION ET GALATHÉE / Pygmalion and Galatea. Francia, 1898 Regia: Georges Méliès Int.: Georges Méliès, Jehanne d’Alcy. Prod.: Star Film (n. 156) 35 mm. L.: 30 m. Bn Da: CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée. – Wikipedia: "Pygmalion and Galatea (French: Pygmalion et Galathée) is an 1898 French short silent trick film directed by Georges Méliès, based on the ancient Pygmalion myth. Plot: Pygmalion, completing his statue of Galatea, is madly in love with it. To his delight, Galatea comes to life. When he tries to embrace her, however, she magically changes place; then her upper and lower halves come apart, much to Pygmalion's confusion. Galatea's halves join back together again, but just as he is about to kiss her at last, she steps back onto her pedestal and becomes a statue again. Production: The Pygmalion myth had long been popular with theatrical illusionists. Pygmalion and Galatea was the first film adaptation of the story; many others followed it in the silent era and beyond. Méliès and Jehanne d'Alcy play the roles of Pygmalion and Galatea in the film. Ideas from the myth returned in later films by Méliès, including The Brahmin and the Butterfly (1901), in which the woman's power and freedom of choice are emphasized, and which Jennifer Forrest summarized as "a Pygmalion and Galatea scenario gone wrong"; The Drawing Lesson, or the Living Statue (1903), in which a mischievous magician creates an equally mischievous Galatea to bewilder a drawing instructor; and Ten Ladies in One Umbrella (1903), in which a Pygmalion-like Méliès conjures up women in front of a sign labeled "Galathea Theater". Release and survival: The film was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 156 in its catalogues. It was presumed lost until 1993, when a print was found in an attic in Barcelona. Reception: François de la Bretèque described the film as "a metaphor on the image-maker, in other words the film-maker: the one who tries to give life to the simulacra engendered by his imagination". Allison de Fren highlighted the implicit drama between the on-screen artist (played by Méliès) attempting to create a permanent work of art, and the off-screen filmmaker (also Méliès) playing magical tricks on him: "Even Pygmalion, that rare soul whose encounter with a living statue ends happily, is in Méliès's reinterpretation confronted with a Galatea who refuses to be contained." Gaby Wood called Pygmalion and Galatea "a perfect metaphor for the magic of moving film. Everything that was wrapped up in the medium's early days is there: the desires, the fears, the superstitions, the power and the hysterical zaniness of its first jagged steps." – AA: Fiction, trick film, of transformations. Pygmalion falls in love with Galatea. Heads and bodies keep trading places.

Georges Méliès: Visite sous-marine du 'Maine' (Star Film 147, 1898). Photo: Wikipedia.

VISITE SOUS-MARINE DU ‘MAINE’ / Divers at Work on the Wreck of the 'Maine'. Francia, 1898. Regia: Georges Méliès. Prod.: Star Film (n. 147). 35 mm. L.: 32 m. Da: BFI – National Archive. – Wikipedia: "Visite sous-marine du Maine, released in the United States as Divers at Work on the Wreck of the "Maine" and in Britain as Divers at Work on a Wreck Under Sea is an 1898 French short silent film directed by Georges Méliès. Synopsis: The sunken USS Maine lies at the bottom of Havana Harbor. Divers approach the wreck and retrieve a corpse from it. Production: The film was shot with an aquarium between the camera and the action, allowing real water and fish to be included in the shot. The corpse is a mannequin. Release and reception: Divers at Work on the Wreck of the Maine was one of a series of four reconstructed newsreels (actualités reconstituées) filmed by Méliès as illustrations of recent incidents in the Spanish–American War. The series was screened at Méliès's theatre of illusions, the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris. The film was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 147 in its catalogues, where it was advertised with the parenthetical subtitle plongeurs et poissons vivants. The film was the most successful entry in Méliès's Spanish–American War series; a French review on 1 May 1898 reported that the film was "of the greatest interest" (du plus vif intérêt). Méliès himself recalled in 1932 that the film was a crowdpleaser. The film was less successful in countries with no strong political interest in the Spanish–American War; when the film was shown in Sherbrooke in French Canada in June 1898, audiences responded negatively and asked for films they had seen about the Passion of Jesus to be shown again instead. – References: Malthête, Jacques; Mannoni, Laurent (2008), L'oeuvre de Georges Méliès, Paris: Éditions de La Martinière, p. 338, ISBN 9782732437323 – Essai de reconstitution du catalogue français de la Star-Film; suivi d'une analyse catalographique des films de Georges Méliès recensés en France, Bois d'Arcy: Service des archives du film du Centre national de la cinématographie, 1981, p. 56, ISBN 2903053073, OCLC 10506429 – Bottomore, Stephen (2007), Filming, faking and propaganda: The origins of the war film, 1897–1902 (PDF) (thesis), Utrecht University, p. VI.5, retrieved 18 February 2015." (Wikipedia). – AA: Fiction, trick film, reconstructed actuality conducted with goldfish. An undersea adventure.

Georges Méliès: Illusions fantasmagoriques / The Famous Box Trick. Star Film 155 (1898).

ILLUSIONS FANTASMAGORIQUES / The Famous Box Trick. Francia, 1898. Regia: Georges Méliès. Prod.: Star Film (n. 155). 35 mm. L.: 23 m. D.: 1’ a 18 f/s. Imbibita / Tinted. Da: Filmoteca Española (Collezione Saraminaga). – Wikipedia: "The Famous Box Trick (French: Illusions Fantasmagoriques; Star Film Catalogue no. 155.) is a 1898 French short black-and-white silent trick film, directed by Georges Méliès, featuring a stage magician who transforms one boy into two with the aid of an axe. The film, "harks back to stage magic," and, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, "can be viewed as a kind of sequel to The Vanishing Lady (Escamotage d’une dame chez Robert-Houdin, 1896) in that it reprises many of the same elements." Synopsis: A stage magician conjures up a dove which he then places in a box with a set of clothes. A boy appears from the box, who the magician divides into two with an axe. The two boys squabble and the magician transforms one into a paper tissue which he shreds and places the other back in the box. The magician then destroys the box with a hammer to show the boy has vanished. The boy reappears and is transformed into flags. The magician then disappears in a puff of smoke only to re-enter through a door to take his bow." - AA: Fiction, a magician conjures people from his haunted chest.

Georges Méliès: Un homme de têtes / The Four Troublesome Heads. Star Film 167. 1898. Photo: Wikipedia.

L’HOMME DE TÊTES OU LES QUATRES TÊTES EMBARRASSANTES / Un homme de têtes / The Four Troublesome Heads. Francia, 1898. Regia: Georges Méliès. Prod.: Star Film (n. 167). 35 mm. L.: 20 m. D.: 1’ a 16 f/s. Da: BFI – National Archive. – Wikipedia: "The Four Troublesome Heads (French: Un homme de têtes, "A Man of Heads") is an 1898 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès. It was released by Méliès's company Star Film and is numbered 167 in its catalogues. An illegal print of the film, copied without authorization from Méliès, was released in America in 1903 by Siegmund Lubin under the title Four Heads Are Better Than One. The film features one of the first known uses of multiple exposure of objects on a black background on film, a special effect Méliès went on to use prolifically. Summary: Georges Méliès enters the frame and stands between two tables. He removes his own head and puts it on one of the tables, where it starts talking and looking around. Méliès repeats the action twice, with a new head appearing on his shoulders each time, until four identical Méliès heads are presented at once. Méliès then plays a banjo, and all four heads sing along. He then bashes two of the heads with his banjo over their obnoxious singing, making them disappear. He then takes off his head and tosses it aside before taking the other head from the second table, tossing it in the air and it lands back onto his neck. He bows to the viewers, bids them farewell and then strolls off. – References: Hammond, Paul (1974). Marvellous Méliès. London: Gordon Fraser. p. 138. ISBN 0900406380. – Frazer, John (1979), Artificially Arranged Scenes: The Films of Georges Méliès, Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., p. 71, ISBN 0816183686". – AA: Fiction, a trick film with multiplying heads which finally form a musical chorus.

AA: The third of my three favourite shows at the Ritrovato was this show of Anno Tre, a marvellous piece of curatorship, with a strange feeling of exploration and discovery.

The art and craft of simple and basic observation. These films are about learning to see.

 In the surgical records there is a sense of something primal, something sacred.

The theatrical and camera-conscious act of the legendary surgeon, Dr. Doyen, is similar to the performance of Georges Méliès the magician.

The histrionics in the hypnotic trances resemble the gestures of early cinema actors.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: MICHAEL BROOKE ON GEORGES MÉLIÈS:
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: MICHAEL BROOKE ON GEORGES MÉLIÈS:

PANORAMA FROM TOP OF A MOVING TRAIN
Panorama pris d’un train en marche, 1898, 1m15s
Star Film Catalogue No. 151

From the top of one of the carriages of a moving train, looking straight ahead over the roofs of the other carriages and over the steam engine pulling them, the viewer travels along a suburban Paris line, under bridges, past assorted buildings and through a station.

For those tracking Georges Méliès’ surviving films from the start, it has already become clear that for all his undoubted originality, he was also only too happy to jump on fashionable bandwagons. The self-explanatory Panorama From Top of a Moving Train is an example of a ‘phantom ride’, a surprisingly popular genre in late 19th-century cinema that capitalised on what was still the considerable novelty of the moving image.

The first ‘phantom ride’ is generally acknowledged to have been The Haverstraw Tunnel (1897), made by the American Mutoscope Company. By the following year, it had attracted dozens of imitations, all of which featured a similar principle: the camera would be strapped to the front of a moving vehicle of some kind, thus conveying the impression of forward motion. This in itself was an attraction, since most other films of the time were shot with an entirely static camera.

In essence, Méliès’ film is little different from its rivals, and there is certainly no indication of who shot it - the only clue that it’s a French film is provided by briefly-glimpsed posters on display on the footbridge over a station that the train passes through - the words ‘Vincennes’ and ‘Auteuil’ can be read, and the name ‘Bel-Air Ceinture’ can be glimpsed on the station itself. This makes it likely that the film was shot on the now disused Chemin de fer de Petite Ceinture, a line that ran between 1852 and 1934 in a circle around Paris’s outer rim.

One point of interest is the position of the camera - while most ‘phantom rides’ saw the camera strapped to the front of a train, thus featuring no visual representation of the means of transport, Méliès chose to position his viewpoint on top of one of the carriages looking ahead, the panorama occasionally obscured by smoke emerging from the engine and drifting across the lens. There’s a faintly clandestine and subversive feeling to this, since the position would only be adopted in real life by someone who for various reasons (dodging fares or officials) has opted to travel illicitly on the roof. Further interest and even a modicum of excitement is provided by the low bridges that the train passes under - at times, the camera seems only millimetres away from being knocked off.

Helped by the fact that the original film was shot outdoors on what appears to be a bright, clear day, the picture on Flicker Alley’s DVD is superb: so sharp and detailed that, as we have already seen, some text on passing posters is perfectly readable. Minor print damage comes in the form of tiny white blotches and occasional tramlines, but these are easy enough to tune out. Frederick Hodges’ Debussian piano accompaniment is built around a chugging rhythm befitting its subject.

Links
    BFI Film and TV Database entry.
    Internet Movie Database entry.
    Jshaide’s review (Rotten Tomatoes forum).
    Christian Hayes’ Phantom Rides, for BFI Screenonline, offers a useful (if UK-biased) overview of the genre.
    Wikipedia on the likely route, the Chemin de fer de Petite Ceinture.
Posted on 18th May 2008
Under: Camera Movement, 1898, Phantom Rides | No Comments »


THE MAGICIAN
Le Magicien, 1898, 1m10s
Star Film Catalogue No. 153

A man dressed as a wizard makes a table appear out of nowhere, and then conjures up a wooden box on top of it. He then leaps towards the box, and vanishes. A man dressed as Pierrot immediately bursts out of the box and jumps onto the floor (at which point a chair appears). He tries to make things appear on the now-empty table, but fails. Dejectedly, he sits on the chair, whereupon food and drink appear on the table. Delighted, he tastes the food and, satisfied, sits back down - but the chair, table and food disappear, leaving him on the ground. A man in Elizabethan doublet and hose appears and claps him on the shoulder, turning him into a bearded artist. The Elizabethan man vanishes, and the artist picks up a bust from the floor and puts it onto a pedestal. He chips at its face, whereupon it comes to life and grabs the hammer and chisel. It then grows an attractive female body, which the artist tries in vain to hug - it keeps disappearing and reappearing in various statuesque poses before vanishing for good in a puff of smoke. The Elizabethan man reappears and kicks the artist’s behind… (print ends here)

Very much in the tradition of Georges Méliès’ earlier A Nightmare (Le Cauchemar, 1896) and The Haunted Castle (Le Château hanté, 1897) and, doubtless, many other now-lost films, The Magician is another exercise in the art of the jump-cut, which is once again used to make objects and people appear and disappear in the blink of an eye.

In fact, this time round, Méliès seems so in thrall to his special effects that it’s hard to detect much in the way of continuous narrative. The title is The Magician (i.e. singular), which suggests that the wizard, the man in the Pierrot costume and the Michelangelesque sculptor are intended to be the same person in various states of metamorphosis, but this is not clear from the evidence on screen. It’s even less clear who the deus ex machina in the form of a gentleman in vaguely Elizabethan dress is intended to represent - he makes two appearances that seem largely irrelevant to the rest of the film. Although at over a minute the running time of The Magician is in line with other Méliès films of the period, the abrupt ending of the print under review suggests that some footage is missing.

One immediate point of interest in The Magician, as it’s an effect not present in any previous surviving Méliès film, is the moment when the bust switches from a rather obviously painted prop (the protagonist was presumably meant to keep it facing in the same head-on direction throughout, but a slight shift in perspective betrays its essential flatness) to something that suddenly comes to life. Presumably the woman who plays the now-aggressive bust is mostly clad in black and standing behind the flat representing the stand, but the effect of a disembodied head and upper body anticipates the kind of multiple-exposure trickery that Méliès would soon undertake in such films as The Four Troublesome Heads (Un homme de tête, 1898).

Another point worth noting is the theme of objects coming to life and taking revenge on their human owners, as demonstrated by the scene in which the hapless Pierrot can taste the food but cannot eat it, since it immediately vanishes along with the chair and table. The Czech Surrealist filmmaker Jan Švankmajer, a known devotee of Méliès, concocted a very similar scenario at the mid-point of his film The Flat (Byt, 1968), and his pixilation technique isn’t that far removed from Méliès’ approach, consisting as it does of simply stopping and restarting the camera after making adjustments to the image.

The untinted print on Flicker Alley’s DVD is generally in acceptable condition, bar occasional flashes of physical and chemical damage and evidence of splice marks around some of the jump-cuts (presumably inherent in the original). The relentless, driving music is sourced from Edvard Grieg’s ‘March of the Dwarfs’ (from the Lyric Suite, op.54), given an electronic arrangement here by Joe Rinaudo, whose touch of the barrel-organ creates an appropriately vaudeville atmosphere.

Mischa von Perger Says:

The man in Elizabethan doublet and hose is dressed as Mephistopheles. Compare Méliès’ portrait of Mephisto reproduced on the back of the booklet edited by Flicker Alley together with the DVD box set. The magician and the man dressed as Mephisto are the same person, as are the Pierrot, who longs in vain for the meal, and the sculptor, who longs in vain for the pretty lady into whom the bust has been transformed. So the magician is the dominant figure here from beginning to end.
Pierrot, in my eyes, does not try to make things appear on the table. It’s mere pantomime. He shows us what he would like to see on the table and to which extent his hunger has grown.
The scénario of the film leaves no doubt about the identity of the magician and “Mephistopheles.” It states, however, that the latter is transformed into the sculptor, which is clearly not the case. (”158 scénarios de films disparus de Georges Méliès,” ed. Association “Les Amis de Georges Méliès,” Paris, 1986, p. 15).

July 13th, 2008 at 6:03 pm

Michael Brooke's Georges Méliès blog


THE FOUR TROUBLESOME HEADS
Un Homme de têtes, 1898, 1m 04s
Star Film Catalogue No. 167

A stage magician stands between two tables, removes his head and places it at the far left of one of them. He then grows another head and crawls under the table to prove that the head is indeed completely detached. He then removes his second head and places it alongside the first one: they strike up a conversation. Having grown a third head, the magician removes it and places it on the right-hand table. He grows a fourth head, picks up a banjo and starts to sing, the three other heads joining in. Unable to stand the racket, the magician hits the two left-hand heads with his banjo, and they vanish. He removes his head and tosses it away, replacing it with the head on the right-hand table. He bounces the new head on his shoulders as though it was a football before taking a bow.

At least in terms of his surviving films, The Four Troublesome Heads marks the most sophisticated advance in Georges Méliès’ special-effects arsenal since his discovery of the jump-cut some two years earlier. That was a primitive but effective technique that facilitated rapid appearances, disappearances and transformations, but the superimpositions on display here push Méliès’ cinema further away from his theatrical roots and towards something altogether new.

In the earlier The Magician (Le Magicien, 1898), Méliès used a combination of jump-cuts and cunningly-designed props (including a fake tripod stand that wasn’t as see-through as it appeared) to create the impression of a disembodied living bust. Here, by contrast, we can actually see Méliès apparently removing his own head and placing it on a table, where it continues to talk as though nothing had happened.

The initial effect is created with Méliès’ now-familiar jump-cut technique, firstly between a shot of Méliès reaching up to his head, and then one of him sporting a black bag on his real head (the lighting doesn’t quite manage to hide this, sadly) placing a dummy head on the table. But the next jump-cut leads to something altogether more sophisticated, as the dummy head is replaced by Méliès’ real one, superimposed via (presumably) a primitive matte arrangement onto the table top. Another jump-cut causes Méliès’ head to reappear (or rather appear, since there are now two on screen), and he then gets on his hands and knees to crawl under the table, proving to sceptics that it really is bearing a disembodied head. While the joins are certainly visible (in addition to the bag, the registration between the shots is imprecise, leading to flickering round the edges of the table), this arguably adds to the film’s charm, since the sheer amount of planning and effort is all too apparent.

He could easily have stopped there, and the film would be impressive enough. But instead, he repeats the trick a second and third time, so that he now has three separate heads on two tables. Meticulously calibrated timing means that they chat to each other and eventually sing in unison, accompanied by the full-bodied Méliès on the banjo. And then, in a moment that’s laugh-out-loud funny to this day, he detests their caterwauling so much that he beats the two left-hand heads with the banjo, causing them to vanish. Finally, almost as an encore, he removes his head again, replacing it with the remaining head on the table, “heading” it football-style before letting it find a permanent resting-place on his shoulders.

The sheer breadth of Méliès’ imagination and his technical adventurousness take the breath away to this day. It’s not certain whether this was the first example of synchronised split-screen multiple exposures in cinema history (on the other side of the channel, G. A. Smith made at least half a dozen similar films, and the surviving example, 1898’s Santa Claus, combines multiple exposure with parallel action), but it’s certainly one of the earliest - and very easy to believe that it was the most complex and fluidly achieved to date. Buster Keaton would go further, and with more technical finesse, in The Playhouse (1923) with its nine performing Keatons in perfect synchronisation, and of course such effects are easy enough to achieve in the CGI era without any of Méliès’ seams, but that doesn’t remotely detract from his achievement here. If he looks a little smug when he takes his final bow, that’s entirely understandable.

As already mentioned, the definition of Flicker Alley’s print is good enough to reveal the joins, though it’s beset with faint vertical tramlines pretty much throughout, as well as mild chemical blotching. There are also significant exposure fluctuations and the image as a whole is softer than on many other prints in this set. (However, this may be a side-effect of the multiple exposures in the original). Disappointingly, Neal Kurz’s solo piano accompaniment is fairly generic - there’s no attempt, for instance, at conveying an impression of the banjo-and-heads performance - though it otherwise does an adequate job.

Links
    BFI Film and TV Database entry.
    Internet Movie Database entry.
    Jshaide’s review (Rotten Tomatoes forum).
    Paghat the Ratgirl’s review (Weird Wild Realm)
    The complete film on YouTube
Posted on 23rd May 2008
Under: Jump-Cuts, Stage Magic, 1898, Superimposition | No CommentS


THE FAMOUS BOX TRICK
Illusions fantasmagoriques, 1898, 1m14s
Star Film Catalogue No. 155

A stage magician produces a dove from his sleeve, kisses it and puts it in a large wooden box that is mounted on a small table. He then throws in various items of clothing and makes a symbolic gesture. A small child emerges from the box, and the magician carries him out, placing him on a small plinth. He then produces a large axe and cuts the boy down the middle, producing two identical children. They begin to fight each other, and the magician picks one up and turns him upside down. The boy is transformed into a piece of paper, which the magician rips up. He puts the other boy back in the box, whose walls he then systematically removes with a hammer, revealing nothing inside. He pats one of the now-separated sides of the box as it lies on the floor, and the boy reappears on top of it. The magician picks him up, and the boy turns into a couple of large flags, which the magician waves at the audience. Finally, he climbs onto the table, sits cross-legged and vanishes in a puff of smoke. He re-emerges from the side of the stage to take a bow.

The Famous Box Trick can be viewed as a kind of sequel to The Vanishing Lady (Escamotage d’une dame chez Robert-Houdin, 1896) in that it reprises many of the same elements. These include a blatantly theatrical setting, whose audience is acknowledged throughout, a bearded magician (almost certainly Méliès himself, albeit sporting a wig) going through a stage routine, a title that implies that said routine is part of a longstanding tradition, and an assortment of specifically filmic special effects that give the lie to that impression.

Two years on, Méliès’ box of tricks was more copiously stuffed than was the case with the relatively primitive The Vanishing Lady. Although the jump-cut still reigns supreme, it’s combined here with an effect in which a boy is ’sliced’ with an axe, dividing him into two identically-dressed children. It’s an effect that both harks back to stage magic (the use of a double being the simplest way of implying that someone is either in two places at once or has made a physically impossible journey), only it’s triggered here by a jump-cut that would be impossible to duplicate on stage.

But it’s also worth noting that this effect is the first that we encounter in the film, and it doesn’t appear until near the halfway mark. Before then, the film does indeed seem to be a straightforward actuality record of a Méliès stage performance, starting with the dove being produced from his sleeve and being tossed into the box along with a set of clothes. Although there appears to be a jump-cut just before the boy appears, there’s no obvious need for one: up to this point there’s nothing in the film that couldn’t have been duplicated on stage.

The division by axe is by far the film’s high point, after which it returns to familiar Méliès territory, with both boys being transformed by more jump-cuts into a piece of paper and a couple of flags respectively, and we have also seen an exploding disappearing act in such films as The Bewitched Inn (L’Auberge ensorcelée, 1897) and The Magician (Le Magicien, 1898).

The print on Flicker Alley’s DVD is marked by white speckles and tramlines more or less throughout, though is otherwise very watchable. Frederick Hodges’ piano accompaniment is a jaunty theme-and-variations arrangement.

Links
    BFI Film and TV Database entry.
    Internet Movie Database entry.
    Jshaide’s review (Rotten Tomatoes forum).
Posted on 20th May 2008
Under: Jump-Cuts, Mechanical Props, Stage Magic, 1898 | No Comments »