Many critics refer to French filmmaker Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès as a "Cinemagician". Born in Paris in 1861, Méliès started his career as a stage magician at the Theatre Robert-Houdin before becoming interested in the mid-1890s in film after seeing a demonstration of the Lumière brothers' camera.
From 1896 until 1914 he directed over 500 films, among them also the iconic Le voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon, 1902). Most of his films didn’t really have a proper plot, but were used to display the special effects available at the time.
Méliès' films include indeed multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves and hand-painted colours.
I’m embedding here two films: the first one is La colonne de feu (The Pillar of Fire, 1899), a sort of early horror film (Méliès also directed early horror Le Manoir du diable in 1896 and Le diable au convent in 1899) that ties in with yesterday’s post about alchemy but also with the serpentine dance theme.
The second film is instead the colourful Le papillon fantastique (The Spider and the Butterfly, 1909) and ties in with last Saturday’s and Monday’s posts on butterfly films.
The Pillar of Fire will be screened on Saturday during the Fashion in Film Festival.
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Comments