The Films of George Melies

A few years before the turn of the century, a revolutionary approach to filmmaking was introduced. The method artificially arranged scenes, the innovator, Georges Melietz. The past decade of the 19th century unveiled the magic of moving pictures. The camera recorded the reality before it. Georges Melietz turned the lens away from reality, to specially constructed images, and took audiences along such flights of fancy as a trip to the moon. ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś ś

was director of the Robert O'Donnell Theatre in Paris,

specializing in magic tricks, juggling, and sleight of hand. At this time, August Lumiere patented his motion picture camera in France. Invited to the showing of Lumiere's camera, Meliez was fascinated and sought to buy the invention. Lumiere refused to sell and said, the cinematic graph can be exploited for a certain time, but only as a scientific curiosity. Commercially, it has no future. Madame Madeline Melted Meliez, Meliez's granddaughter, interviewed here by Michael Grig, film critic and author, describes what Meliez did. Oh, he was the creator of the motion picture heart. He was the first to think that it was possible to do a show with that. And he is noted for that thing, but he was interested by so many other things, by theatres and magic and drawing. He was really, I suppose, the first film showman up until his day

film was something of a scientific curiosity, but he was one of the very first to make a film for the entertainment of an audience. He was the first. He was the first. His first in the world, yes. And a very versatile one, could you tell me something about his versatility? I don't know how expensive he is. Well, he was, I understand, a set designer, an artist, a magician, and he acted in some of his own films. We're going to show the Living Soap Bubble, which is his 1906 film, one of his 1906 films. And we'll be able to see, I think, the ingenuity that George Melias, your grandfather, brought to the film. Is there something you want to tell us about this film, the Living Soap Bubble? He appears in it.

Yes, it is one of the rarest films, where you can see him unless he's wise, because he acted in all his films. But he was always this wise and makeup. He had always a beard and blonde hair or white hair. And he was always the devil to a good devil to talk. But in the Soap Bubble, you should see, you can see Melias himself. He was told he was thin and bold. And now you can see how he was. He used people all around the studio, didn't he? Besides himself, just like Rosalini today. Well, let's see the Living Soap Bubble, 1906 George Melias film. Thank you.

We think of early films as first being seen in Nickelodeon.

But this came later for George Melier's and his films. First he was filming in the open air, like Grimier, and after a short time he began to understand that the image show a fantastic film to show people how he can really be responsible. Then his clients were itinerant theatres and showmen who were showing spectacles in the fairs, in buildings, in the fairs, in Paris, and the people were surprised and

interested by so imagination and so sparkling imagination. Well, as a magician, he was a former magician of practicing one. He was very much interested in the sort of fool-the-eye effects that he could devise by film, wasn't he? What besides his interest in camera tricks would you say he was trying to express? He was trying to express himself with magic twigs, and he was trying to show a new scene. I see. He was an artist too, wasn't he? Yes, yes, and the poet. And the poet. And I understand that in your schoolbooks that you left around, sketch pads, he would take them up and do drawings.

Yes, he was always doing. Drawing was the thing that interested in all his life alone, and when I left my schoolbooks lay on the table, I find sketches, I found sketches on my schoolbooks. Let's see some of those stills that he used to draw in your sketchbooks. And I was doing some little things like that. That's beautiful, detailed work, isn't it? Have you got some of the characters? I understand in one of the hotels he drew a patron of the hotel. It was a guest in the hotel, a painter. Melius used his skills as an artist to draw all of his effects, costumes, and characters. Both in his magic shows, and later in his films.

caricature was an special talent of his, and at one time he worked as a political cartoonist for a magazine called La Grief. In addition, Melius was a man of enormous mechanical skill he built his own processing machine, and even his own camera. His camera was quite primitive, he was not possible to do more than 20 metres film, about 60 feet. 60 feet. Then one day he was to the sea shore, to film a storm, and then he was alone with a very heavy camera, then he took 20 metres film and returned to the photograph show to charge, to which charge the camera, and returned to the show, and returned to the town. Then he was doing that ten time and was very exhausted, but the film was very good. It was worth it.

We have now an 1899 film, the Brahmin and the Butterfly, in which we'll notice George Melius' great ingenuity, as imaginative effects, is there something we should watch for in the Brahmin and the Butterfly Madeline? Yes, it's a charming and lovely film, because in two minutes you can understand a lovely story. Melius acted in the Brahmin, it's Melius, it tastes good, it's quiet, and there is a one who has to hit to the Brahmin to become a nice butterfly, and the Brahmin with the charm, with the flute. You call that flute? Flute, yes. Flute says arrive to have a nice butterfly with the worm, and the notorious butterfly is a woman, because Melius was flanged, and then the Brahmin fall in love with this butterfly, and the prey is a butterfly to Mahim, and the butterfly give him a touch,

and then the Brahmin become the worm. Ah, well let's see what George Melius' grandfather did with this touching little situation with Brahmin and the butterfly. Thank you. Thank you.

You've just seen the Brahmin and the Butterfly and 1899 a film by George Melius. I understand that your grandfather was the first movie maker to build his own studio. Could you tell me something about that first movie studio? Yes, first he was doing films in the open air, but you cannot predict the rain and command sent to shine.

Then he sought to have a studio. He was beginning to do the plans for the studio in October, on 1896, and the studio was finished in March 1897. Then it was the first movie studio in the world, and it was all covered with glass, because the films we had done with natural light, no artificial light, and the studio was very small. He was only 18 feet wide and perhaps 60 feet long. The plan of the studio provided for a fixed camera position at one end and an action area at the opposite. This area contained the flies, the intricate machinery, and the trap doors to accommodate the elaborate mechanical effects

which Melius utilized in his films. Melius himself invented the effects and the devices to produce them. These were all carefully designed and drawn in his own hand before construction, and then they were built by Melius and his co-workers in a shop adjacent to the studio. Can you describe a typical day in a George Melius studio? First, it was a problem with actors. You must think about actors. You know, he acted himself in all his films, and the theater actors don't want to come in the studio. Melius preferred to have dancers and acrobats. It was more hazy to him to have this sort of actor. And it was very strict with actors.

It was clever man and he saw it very quickly. Then when an actor didn't understand something, one or twice, then he was... Oh, yes, Melius was calling another one. Well, since his camera could only take a short stretch of film, he had to work very quickly. Yes, very quickly. Well, now we're going to see in a relatively late George Melius film, around dated 1911, I think, a tour de force of what Melius did with all this wonderful ingenuity. Yes, there is a mirror effect, and really there was no mirror. No, it was a tour de force, because each scene was turned in two times before the mirror and behind the mirror. And if you see very with many attention, in much attention the film, you can see that in two places,

the synchronization is not good. Between the right arm and left arm in the other side of the mirror. Well, let's view Monsieur Le Barron dated 1911, filmed by George Melius. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

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