Georges Melies And The Birth Of Fantasy Films

Marie-Georges MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs (birth name) a pioneer of the early cinema was born on December 8, 1861 in Paris, France. He was born to wealthy industrialist parents who manufactured shoes. At an early age Georges MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs showed interest in the arts, and stage design. He studied stage design and puppetry in Paris at various theatres.

"In 1884, MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs continued his studies abroad, in London at the request of his parents - they insisted he learn English after which they intended him to work at his father's footwear business. While in London, he developed a keen interest in stage conjury after witnessing the work of Maskelyne and Cooke. On his return to Paris he worked at his father's factory and took over as manager when his father retired. His position meant that he was able to raise enough money to buy the famous Theatre Robert Houdin when it was put up for sale in 1888." (Early Cinema, 1)

He sold his share of the family footwear business at the age of 26 when he bought the Theatre Robert Houdin. It was here that Georges MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs became a very famous stage magician in France; he used illusions that he learned in London as well as tricks that he worked on his own. Georges MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs attended the first screening of the Lumiere Cinematographe on December 1895.

This is where he became interested in film and became intrigued, he offered to buy the projector from the Lumiere Bros, but they refused, looking to make money off the invention. Georges MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs thought that this could be a great addition to his stage act.

In February of the following year, Georges MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs purchased a motion picture camera, and he began making his own films three months later. Cinema technology was just being developed, and MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs studied the various new mechanisms, and then had projectors, printers, and processing equipment custom-made, based on other the inventions of other people or on improvements of his own design.

Georges MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs wanted after Robert W. Paul, a man who bought and sold counterfeit projectors that were based on the design of American Kinetoscope, which was originally invented by Thomas Edison, who did not patent it. MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs bought one of these projectors, and showed many imported films by Edison in the Theatre Robert Houdin. Although it was not longer after that MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs created his own cameras that were patterned after Paul's model. He began making his own, one scene, one shot, and one-minute films.

MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs' first films were straightforward cityscapes and event films, patterned after the short films of the Lumieres Brothers, but soon he was using the camera to document magic acts and gags from the stage of the Theatre Robert Houdin. By late 1896, MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs was incorporating his knowledge of the mechanisms of motion pictures with the format of the stage magic skit, producing his first "trick" films. These short films relied on multiple exposures to create the illusion of people and objects appearing and disappearing at will, or changing from one form to another, these film "tricks" were not accomplished in a lab.

He began adapting his stage acts for his films, replacing pulleys, and mirrors for shutter and lens. The story of how MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs discovered how to change images, or to appear to make them disappear or change in size is known to be accidental.

"The story as Melies himself set it down in 1907 (appearing in translation in David Robinson's Georges MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs: Father of Film Fantasy), is questionable, but credible. Ð''The camera I was using in the beginning (a rudimentary affair in which the film would tear or would often refuse to move) produced an unexpected effect one day when I was photographing very prosaically the Place de l'Opera. It took a minute to release the film and get the camera going again. During this minute the people, buses, vehicles had of course moved. Projecting the film, having joined the break, I suddenly saw a Madeline-Bastille omnibus changed into a hearse and men into women. The trick of substitution, called the trick of stop-action, was discovered, and two days later I made the first metamorphoses of men into women and the first sudden disappearances which, at first, had a big success.'" (Worley, 18)

MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs began to write, design, direct, and act in hundreds of his own fairy tales and science fiction films, and he began to develop techniques such as stop-motion photography, double and multiple-exposures, and fades. His first optically manipulated film was The Vanishing Lady in 1896, this is where his acting is shown, and MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs himself is shown dressed as a magician throwing a blanket over his assistant and whips away the blanket to expose a skeleton now seated in place of his assistant. This was all accomplished while he was filming; lab manipulations were possible at this time but very small.

Others argue that this type of illusion had been accomplished before, but he was the only one who used these illusions to depict the unreal, an occurrence that would not happen in the world he and his audience inhabited. He did not aim to reveal the reality of the illusions. MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs from this point started the fantasy cinema, which of course has grown since, many adaptations and transformations have occurred.

MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs also constructed studios to allow him to have power over the cinematography of his films. "Ð'...MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs built small glass enclosed studio. Finished by early 1897, the studio permitted MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs to design and construct sets painted on canvas flats. Even working in this studio, however, MÐ"©liÐ"Ёs