Opinion Really magical
How George Méliès brought an illusionists skill to the movies
Films like The Incredible Burt Wonderstone remind us of the close historical kinship between magic and the movies. Indeed,magicians were the first professional group to grasp the fantastical possibilities of the newly invented cinema at the end of the 19th century. Together,a number of illusionists initiated forms of special effects and fantasy that continue to be used today. In the December of 1895,the Lumière brothers debuted their Cinématographe film projector in Paris,but a few months later entrusted the important task of introducing moving pictures to audiences in London to an accomplished magician,Félicien Trewey,whom they also filmed performing feats of manual dexterity. A few years later,when the Lumières short,non-fiction actualités began to lose favour,they turned to another magician,Bertrand Velle,to update their catalogue through a series of phantasmagoric films intended to satisfy a vigorous demand for trick films.
The trick film,which showcased visual illusions that appear to defy the laws of nature,was one of the most popular film genres around the turn of the 20th century. Georges Méliès,another magician-turned-filmmaker,was more responsible than anyone else for the international successes of the trick film. Between 1896 and 1913,Méliès produced more than five hundred films (less than half of which have survived) in a glass-enclosed studio outside Paris. The performance space of Mélièss studio mimicked the stage of his magic theatre and though Méliès rarely performed magic in his own theatre,he almost always played the role of the magician or sorcerer in his films. Although he made films of all types,his specialty was what he termed fantastic views trick and fantasy films created with complex stagecraft and various forms of early special effects,including concealed cuts,multiple exposures,superimpositions and perspectival deceptions.
With more than a decade of prior experience directing magic theatre,Méliès was adept at exploiting the limits of an audiences sightlines. He supplemented his repertoire of illusionistic staging techniques with manipulations of time and space made possible with cinematography and editing. By carefully splicing together,or multiply exposing,painstakingly choreographed separate film takes,Méliès was able to effect surprising instantaneous transformations,appearances,and disappearances,as well as to clone his own onscreen body. Like all magicians,Méliès jealously guarded the exact workings of these cinematic tricks as trade secrets,unable to recognise that revelations of what took place behind the scenes of a film studio actually stimulated popular interest in cinema. Mélièss trademarked Star-Films were sold around the world,but were ruthlessly pirated by his American competitors (motion pictures lacked copyright protection) and widely imitated. Indeed,Mélièss striking trick effects were arguably an inspiration for one of Indias first native-born filmmakers,D.G. Phalke,who began making films in 1912 by adapting cinematic trick effects to tales drawn from Indian mythology.
Like a number of other magicians of the time,Méliès viewed cinema not as a distinct medium that would rival theatrical magic,but as a new technology that could (and should) become part of the up-to-date magicians expanded bag of tricks. In England,Walter Booth worked with the filmmaker Robert W. Paul to produce trick films and some early examples of animation a technique that was originally understood as but another trick effect. After appearing in several films made by the Edison company,the British conjurer and quick-sketch artist J. Stuart Blackton partnered with two fellow magicians,Albert E. Smith and Ronald Reader,to form the American Vitagraph company,a prominent early filmmaking concern that would eventually be absorbed by Warner Brothers.
By the time Méliès stopped making films,his fiercely individualistic approach to filmmaking he was the director,the set designer,the editor,and a performer for most of his films was outmoded,eclipsed by an industrialised approach to film production that exploited division of labour and economies of scale. After World War I damaged the major European film industries and the United States supplanted France as the most prolific producer of films,trick effects quickly ceased being ends in themselves and simply became one more tool of visual storytelling. While a number of American silent feature films centre on main characters who are magicians,the Hollywood studio system had relatively little use for the unique skill set of real professional illusionists like Harry Houdini. Houdini was the worlds most famous magician,but was unable to achieve true movie stardom during the 1920s,though newsreel footage of his escape stunts did garner considerable applause. Like Méliès,Houdini returned to a full-time theatre career after several years devoted more or less exclusively to different aspects of filmmaking. In more recent years,professional magicians including Ricky Jay,most notably have occasionally taken parts in the realm of film production. But magicians had their most decisive and lasting influence on cinema at the very beginning,when they were able to conjure up fantastic possibilities for the new medium that their contemporaries were scarcely prepared to envision.
The writer is associate professor,Department of Screen Arts and Cultures,University of Michigan,US. He is the author of Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film,Houdini,and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century,express@expressindia.com
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