Cinema's first magician — a conjurer who saw the Lumières' invention and built it a dream life: five hundred films from a glass studio, a rocket in the Moon's eye, and a toy stand at Montparnasse station at the end.
Georges Méliès sat in the Grand Café on 28 December 1895 at the Lumière brothers' first public film screening and tried to buy the invention on the spot. Refused — Antoine Lumière told him the machine had no commercial future to sell — he bought a projector in London, rebuilt it into a camera, and spent the next seventeen years giving cinema its imagination: over five hundred films, most famously A Trip to the Moon of 1902, whose rocket-in-the-Moon's-eye is the first universally recognized image in film history.[1]
He was a stage magician first — owner of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin from 1888 — and every trick he found in the camera was a conjuror's trick scaled up: the stop-substitution he discovered when his camera jammed on the place de l'Opéra, multiple exposures, hand-painted colour, a glass studio at Montreuil built like a greenhouse for daylight. The fall was as complete as the rise: bankrupt by 1913, his negatives melted down in the war, he was found in 1925 selling toys from a kiosk in the Gare Montparnasse. Paris made it up to him just in time — a gala in 1929, the Légion d'honneur from Louis Lumière's own hands in 1931, and a state pension for the end.
Méliès was born in Paris on 8 December 1861, third son of a wealthy boot manufacturer, and discovered conjuring in London at Maskelyne's Egyptian Hall while supposedly learning English for the family business. In 1888 he sold his share in the boots to his brothers and bought the Théâtre Robert-Houdin on the boulevard des Italiens, the little temple of French magic, where he staged illusions of his own design for seven years.[2]
On 28 December 1895 he was in the audience at the Salon Indien du Grand Café for the Lumière brothers' first paid public screening. He offered to buy a Cinématographe before the evening ended and was turned down flat. Within months he had acquired an English projector, reverse-engineered it into a camera, and begun shooting; the Star Film company followed, its motto Le monde à la portée de la main — the whole world within reach.[1]
The famous accident came early: filming street traffic at the place de l'Opéra, his camera jammed for a few seconds, and when the developed strip jumped an omnibus into a hearse Méliès saw what a splice could do. Stop-substitution became the engine of a whole genre — beheadings, vanishings, devils in puffs of smoke — and in 1897 he built the world's first purpose-built film studio at Montreuil, just east of Paris: a greenhouse of glass walls and roof, sized exactly to his theatre stage, where daylight did the lighting and trapdoors did the magic.[1]
A Trip to the Moon, shot there in 1902 — fourteen minutes, a then-enormous ten thousand francs, Méliès himself leading the astronomers — became the first worldwide hit in the medium's history. It made everyone money except its maker: Thomas Edison's agents obtained a print and duplicated it across America without paying a centime, and the piracy, Méliès said later, taught him what the film business was going to be.[3]
The industry he had invented outgrew him: longer films, story realism, distribution systems he refused until too late. By 1913 Star Film was bankrupt and his wife Eugénie was dead; the war finished the ruin, the army confiscating hundreds of his prints to melt for silver and celluloid — boot heels, by the standard account, a grim joke on the family trade. In 1923, evicted from the Théâtre Robert-Houdin and enraged, he burned the negatives left at Montreuil himself.[2]
From 1925 he stood twelve hours a day in a toy-and-sweet kiosk in the Gare Montparnasse, run with Jeanne d'Alcy, the actress of his early films whom he married that year. Journalists and young cinephiles rediscovered him there at the decade's end: a gala tribute at the Salle Pleyel in 1929 played the surviving films to an audience that gave him an ovation, Louis Lumière — the man who had refused to sell him a camera — pinned the Légion d'honneur on him in 1931, and the state gave the old magician an apartment at the Orly cinema veterans' home. He died in Paris on 21 January 1938 and is buried at Père Lachaise, where his tomb carries a portrait relief and the title he earned: creator of the cinematographic spectacle.[2]
Méliès made something in the region of five hundred and twenty films between 1896 and 1913, and sold them by catalogue, numbered, like any other manufactured product. Star Film had agents across Europe and an office in New York run by his brother Gaston.[4]
A large part of the output was hand-coloured. Méliès sent prints to the workshop of Élisabeth Thuillier, where women painted each frame individually with fine brushes, working to a colour scheme she set. The studio employed more than two hundred of them, and each woman applied a single colour, so a film carrying twenty colours passed down a line of twenty pairs of hands.[4]
The catalogue was also stolen from constantly. A Trip to the Moon was duplicated and sold in America without payment, most damagingly by Thomas Edison's people, who had a print copied and distributed while Méliès was still shipping his own. The New York office was opened largely to stop it, and it did not.[3]
By 1923 Méliès had lost the Théâtre Robert-Houdin to a road-widening scheme, lost the company, and was being pursued for debt. The Montreuil property was sold.[2]
In a single fit that year he burned the negatives held there. He set fire to the lot in the garden: the masters of hundreds of films, most of which existed nowhere else.[2]
That was not the only loss. During the First World War the French Army had confiscated more than four hundred Star Film prints and melted them down for the silver in them and for celluloid, which went into boot heels. Of the five hundred and twenty-odd titles, roughly two hundred survive, and almost every one of those came back from a copy that had been sold abroad and forgotten.[4]
A Trip to the Moon was released in 1902 in both black-and-white and hand-coloured versions. The coloured print was assumed lost for most of a century.[4]
One turned up in 1993, in a donation to the Filmoteca de Catalunya in Barcelona, decomposed into a solid block of nitrate. It took until 2011 to separate, scan and reassemble it frame by frame, and it was shown that year at Cannes.[4]
The film that had made him internationally famous in 1902 came back in the form he had originally sold it, more than seventy years after his death and nearly ninety years after he burned the negative.[4]
Born in Paris on 8 December, third son of a boot manufacturer.
Sells his share of the family business and buys the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, temple of French stage magic.
At the Lumières' first public screening on 28 December, he tries to buy the Cinématographe that night and is refused.
His camera jams at the place de l'Opéra and an omnibus becomes a hearse — the stop trick, the seed of special effects.
Builds the glass studio at Montreuil, the world's first purpose-built film studio.
A Trip to the Moon — fourteen minutes, ten thousand francs — becomes cinema's first worldwide hit, and Edison's agents pirate it across America.
Opens a New York office under his brother Gaston to stop American duplication of his films.
Star Film is bankrupt; the industry he invented has outgrown its inventor.
The army confiscates hundreds of his prints, melting them down for silver and celluloid; in 1923 he burns the Montreuil negatives himself.
The French Army confiscates more than four hundred Star Film prints and melts them down for their silver and celluloid, which goes into boot heels.
Loses the Théâtre Robert-Houdin to a road-widening scheme and the Montreuil property to sale.
Burns the negatives of hundreds of films in the garden at Montreuil.
Begins selling toys and sweets from a kiosk in the Gare Montparnasse with Jeanne d'Alcy, whom he marries.
Rediscovered: a gala at the Salle Pleyel plays the surviving films to an ovation.
Louis Lumière himself pins the Légion d'honneur on the man he once refused to sell a camera.
Is given an apartment at the Château d'Orly by the cinema industry's mutual aid society.
Dies in Paris on 21 January, aged seventy-six; buried at Père Lachaise.
A hand-coloured print of A Trip to the Moon reaches the Filmoteca de Catalunya in Barcelona, decomposed into a block of nitrate.
The restored colour Trip to the Moon is shown at Cannes, reassembled frame by frame.
Film
The rocket in the Moon's eye: Méliès's 1902 fantasy — astronomers in wizard hats, a capsule fired from a giant cannon, umbrella-wielding battles with lunar insect-men — is the first film in the world's shared imagination, and the proof, seven years into cinema's existence, that the camera could lie magnificently.
Méliès built A Trip to the Moon on Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and its sequel, taking the cannon-launched projectile straight from the novels. Verne was fifty-three years older and still alive when the film appeared in 1902; he died three years later.
Founded · 1896
Founded his own production company within a year of seeing the Lumières' invention, and built its glass studio at Montreuil in 1897 — France's first purpose-built film studio, run as a one-man industry: director, designer, performer, technician, and distributor.
Inventing cinema as spectacle. A Paris stage magician who saw the Lumière brothers' first screening in December 1895, he made over five hundred films between 1896 and 1912, discovered or perfected the medium's first special effects — the stop trick, multiple exposure, hand-painted colour — and built the world's first film studio, a glasshouse at Montreuil. A Trip to the Moon (1902), with its rocket in the Moon's eye, is the most famous image of early cinema.
Yes — from 1925 he ran a toy and sweet kiosk in the Gare Montparnasse with Jeanne d'Alcy, the actress of his early films, twelve hours a day. Bankruptcy in 1913, the wartime melting of his confiscated prints, and his own burning of the Montreuil negatives in 1923 had erased both fortune and archive. Journalists found him at the kiosk at the decade's end, and the rehabilitation followed: the 1929 Salle Pleyel gala, the Légion d'honneur in 1931, and a state apartment for his last years. Martin Scorsese's film Hugo (2011) is built on this chapter.
By accident, on the place de l'Opéra in 1896: his camera jammed for a few seconds while filming traffic, and on the developed film an omnibus appeared to transform into a hearse. The jam became the deliberate stop-substitution splice — stop the camera, change the scene, restart — which powered his vanishings, beheadings and devils, and stands at the origin of every effects shot since.
Most are gone. Of over five hundred, roughly two hundred survive. The French army confiscated hundreds of prints during the First World War and melted them for silver and celluloid; Méliès himself, evicted and embittered, burned his remaining Montreuil negatives in 1923. A Trip to the Moon survives in many prints — including one hand-coloured copy rediscovered in 1993 and restored in 2011.
Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, division 64. His tomb carries a bronze portrait relief and names him créateur du spectacle cinématographique — creator of the cinematographic spectacle. It remains one of the cemetery's pilgrimage graves for film lovers.
Something in the region of five hundred and twenty, between 1896 and 1913, sold by numbered catalogue like any other manufactured product. Fewer than two hundred survive, and almost all of those came back from prints that had been sold abroad and forgotten.
Because by 1923 he had lost the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, the company and the Montreuil property, and was being pursued for debt. He set fire to the negatives held at Montreuil in a single fit that year, and sold surviving prints for their celluloid, which was melted down and reused for shoe heels.
Many of them. Méliès sent prints to Élisabeth Thuillier's workshop, where a team of women painted each frame individually with fine brushes to a colour scheme she set. A single film could pass through two hundred pairs of hands.
It was assumed lost for most of a century. A print reached the Filmoteca de Catalunya in Barcelona in 1993, decomposed into a solid block of nitrate. Separating, scanning and reassembling it took until 2011, when it was shown at Cannes.
Buried at · 1938
Buried in division 64 in January 1938 — cinema's first magician, a decade after the Gare Montparnasse toy stand and the rediscovery that restored his name.
Founded · 1896
Founded his own production company within a year of seeing the Lumières' invention, and built its glass studio at Montreuil in 1897 — France's first purpose-built film studio, run as a one-man industry: director, designer, performer, technician, and distributor.
Influenced by · 1902
Méliès built A Trip to the Moon on Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and its sequel, taking the cannon-launched projectile straight from the novels. Verne was fifty-three years older and still alive when the film appeared in 1902; he died three years later.
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