#melies

[blondebrainpowered]

Un Homme de Têtes (The Four Troublesome Heads) by Georges Méliès, 1898

[detournementsmineurs]

"Recomposition du Décor" dessin de Georges Méliès pour "Cendrillon ou la Pantoufle Merveilleuse" (circa 1912-30) présentée dans les collections du "Musée Méliès" de la Cinémathèque Française, juin 2025.

[radiodormouse]

🎃 31 Days of Halloween – Day 18🎃

The Monster (1903)

★★★★★ Watched 18 Oct 2025

By 1903, Georges Méliès had mastered the art of turning stage magic into cinema, and The Monster might be one of his most purely enjoyable short films. It’s good, clear storytelling, told with the brisk rhythm of a newspaper comic strip come to life.

A magician performs for a single spectator, summoning a skeleton from thin air. With a few waves of his hands (and Méliès’ ingenious jump cuts), the skeleton transforms. First, into a writhing monster, then into a beautiful woman. The spectator falls for her instantly, only for chaos to erupt when she’s turned back into a skeleton. The magician gives chase, desperate to get his creation back.

It’s a perfect time capsule of Méliès’ style: part horror, part comedy, and all showmanship. Over a century later, it still entertains, reminding us that sometimes the earliest filmmakers knew how to delight and surprise an audience.

[iconauta]

The Astronomer's Dream (French: La lune à un mètre), is a trick film from 1898 realized by Georges Méliès .

[archibaldtuttle]

This grainy, stained, odd looking image is a frame from the first science-fiction film in history, “A Trip to the Moon” (Le Voyage dans la Lune) by George Méliès. It’s not a particularly striking shot like the face of the moon with a rocket in its eye or the umbrella growing into a giant fungus. But this image made me cry at work today.

I work at a film restoration company and I was working on this specific film, when I got to this frame. The stain on the right is a fingerprint - a fingerprint left by a projectionist who was patching up this reel about 120 years ago.

120 years ago.

This reel is torn everywhere - it’s a projection copy, they’re all full of little voids that have been patched up like this. You can see the tape at the top and the stains of glue under it - probably because this particular piece of film was patched up several times. And a fingerprint.

120 years ago, in a tent filled with smoke at a carnival, a projectionist was showing this goofy little movie. It had adventure, special effects, it was an interesting novelty. Day after day he was mounting the reels on the projectors and playing it. Day after day it got more and more torn and every night he had to lay out the film on a table and fix the tears. A little bit of glue or a little bit of tape, carefully manipulated, to stick the two ends together. Frames were lost - there always was frames lost, at the time it didn’t matter - but he had to do his best to glue the two ends perfectly so as not to jam the projector the next day.

There are dozens of tears on this reel. I don’t know how many were done by the same projectionist. But when I see this fingerprint, I see the clumsy touch of someone who has patched up this film so many times he doesn’t even remember if he did this spot already or not. He slips and presses his finger against the wrong side of the film - just for a second - and it’s there. It’s there forever, imprinted in the chemicals that make the film exist. And he probably didn’t think it mattered. It was just a little novelty, a goofy little movie that would be forgotten in a few months.

But because this projectionist took so much care to patch up this film, today we can watch the first science fiction film ever made, that is 120 years old. And when I patched up those reels, on my computer, so as to not leave my own print in the chemicals, I felt like I was touching the hand of a ghost.

[annoyingthemesong]

SUBLIME CINEMA #237 - LE VOYAGE A TRAVERS L'IMPOSSIBLE

Melies was a pioneer, at the shallow beginning of the 20th century he was making films that just blew peoples minds. Voyage to the Moon, and Impossible Voyage - inspired by a Jules Verne novel, are still incredible feats of creativity and technical acumen. 

[deforest]

LE VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE (1902) dir. Georges Méliès