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4/4/1896: Melies Changes Men into Women
Having been privileged enough to have witnessed the Lumieres' first public presentation of projected motion pictures, Georges Melies offer of 10,000 francs for a Cinematographe was greeted with a point blank refusal. This was hardly surprising, as superior offers of 20,000 francs from M. Thomas, director of the Musee Grevin, and a whopping 50,000 francs from M. Lallemand, director of the Folies Bergeres were also turned down. Melies would prove to be more resourceful than these other entrepreneurs, however.
Maries George Jean Melies was born at 29 Boulevard Saint-Martin in Paris on the 8th December 1861 to Jean-Louis Stanislas Melies, a successful footwear manufacturer and his wife, Dutch-born Johannah-Catherine. Georges was the youngest of three boys, and, from an early age, displayed a talent for drawing, and also spent hours constructing cardboard Punch and Judy stages from which he would present shows to his young audience. His love of the stage was stimulated further when he was ten-years-old, by a visit to the Theatre Robert Houdin, where he saw the famous magician perform. Enlisted into military service, with the 113th Infantry Regiment, Georges was stationed at Blois, near the estate of Houdin. Leaving the army in 1884, he was sent to London to improve his English (his father intended to open a branch there), and spent many evenings visiting fantasy stage shows, such as the “Royal Illusionists” (John Neville Maskelyne and George Alfred Cooke) at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly.
Returning to France, Georges became a machinery supervisor at one of his father’s shoemaking factories, but spent his spare time learning conjuring tricks. In June 1885, he married Eugenie Genin, a young Dutch woman, and daughter of a close friend of Georges’ uncle. When his father retired in 1888 and handed over the business to his sons, Georges wasted no time in selling his share to his brothers. With the money he earned from the sale and a dowry from his wife’s family, Melies bought the Theatre Robert-Houdin at 8 Boulevard des Italiens for 40,000 francs from the widow of the famous magician’s son. In October 1888, after refurbishing the theatre, Melies staged his first presentation, entitled La Stroubaka Persane.
After having his offer to buy a Cinematographe turned down by the Lumieres, Melies sought other means by which he could display his own moving projections. He heard about Robert Paul in England, who was also experimenting with projected movement, and who had developed his own projector which he called the Theatrograph (later renamed the Animatograph). Melies bought a machine from Paul through his distributor David Devant (who was also a magician) and also received a few filmstrips produced by both Paul and Thomas Edison. Melies presented his first film screening – mostly of films made for the Edison Kinetoscope - at the Theatre Robert-Houdin on the 4th April 1896.
Melies was not satisfied, however, with merely screening other people’s films. He wanted to make his own. Together with engineers Lucien Reulos and Lucien Korsten, Melies converted Paul’s Theatrograph into a camera-projector (the Kinetographe) using spare parts from the theatre storeroom. The Kinetographe was patented on the 2nd September 1896. Unable to purchase perforated Eastman film, he was forced to commission a perforator from a local engineer. By May 1896, however, just one month after he had begun screening films at his theatre, Melies was ready to begin production of his own.
The first film he shot was Une Partie de Cartes, which was an imitation of the Lumieres' Partie d’Ecarte (many of Melies’ early films were direct copies of his competitors), a one-minute record of four men – Melies, his brother Gaston, and two friends – playing cards in Melies’ garden at Montreuil-sur-bois. Melies would go on to make a further 77 films in 1896. Some of them (such as Sauvetage en Riviere [Rescue on the River], a copy of R.W. Paul’s Up the River,) were filmed on two 65 feet strips which were sold separately. The vast majority of the films were travelogues and actualities – in fact the bulk of Melies’ work consists of straightforward films such as these, although it is his special effects films for which he is chiefly remembered today. And these ‘trick’ films only came into being because of a faulty camera…
Melies was filming an everyday scene at the Place de l’Opera one day, filming passing traffic and pedestrians, when his camera jammed. Melies explained in 1907:
“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 Madeleine-Bastile omnibus change into a hearse and men into women. The trick of substitution, called the trick of stop-action was discovered.”
Melies is perhaps a little too modest in his account. Given the generally primitive state of the first movie cameras, it is unlikely that Melies was the first cameraman to whom this had happened. He was the first, however, to realise the significance of what had occurred. Melies instinctively understood that the camera could be used to actually create magic tricks as well as merely recording them, and immediately put that realisation into use. In October 1896, he made Escamotage d’une Dame au Theatre Robert-Houdin (The Vanishing Lady) the first of his trick films, and the third earliest of his filmography that still survives today. In the film, a woman (Jehanne D’Alcy) sits on a chair onstage and is covered with a large cloth by Melies. When Melies removes the cloth, a skeleton is sitting in the chair. Melies then reverses the process and the woman reappears. The trick was based on an illusion by Buatier de Kolta, and it astonished audiences in 1896. It is debatable whether Melies can lay claim to being the first to use stop-action in film: a year earlier, Albert Clark had produced The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots for Edison, in which the film was stopped just before the axe fell so that the actress could be replaced by a dummy (see film). In England, G. A. Smith was also using these techniques. Melies certainly made the most inventive use of these techniques, however, and it is for this reason that he is still remembered. Another of Melies celebrated films from this year is Une Nuit Terrible, in which a man is attacked in his bed by a giant spider. A third landmark film from this year was Le Manoir du Diable (The Devil’s Manor), which contends with Alice Guy’s La Fee Aux Choux for the accolade of first narrative film.
Melies’ films became increasingly popular, and in late 1896 he began construction of a purpose-built glass-walled movie studio – the first after Edison’s Black Maria – on the grounds of his home in Montreuil-sur-bois. He also introduced the Star Film trademark, with the motto, “The Whole World Within Reach” on the 20th December.
For the 35-year-old Georges Melies it must have seemed that the whole world truly was within his reach.
"Young man, you should thank me. This invention is not for sale, but if it were it would ruin you. It can be exploited for a while as a scientific curiosity; beyond that it has no commercial future."
Antoine Lumiere to Georges Melies
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