Méliès Museum: Magic, Dreams, and the Art of Make Believe
No one can deny that cinema is the art of dreams on screen. And no one understood this better than the once-magician and visionary film pioneer Georges Méliès.
His particular vision, mixing magic tricks with film technology, was not only groundbreaking over a century ago, but it also established the foundations for the Fantasy/Science Fiction film genre, which still remain to this day.
Due to his undeniable importance in film history, as part of its reopening after the pandemic restrictions, the Cinémathèque Française Film Museum pays tribute to Georges Méliès with a new 300 sq meters wing solely dedicated to his work.
Divided into three sections - Pre-cinema times, Méliès work, and Méliès influence in contemporary cinema-, the large new wing is composed of several interconnected halls, each one dedicated to a particular subject in Méliès’ career and work, taking the visitor to a voyage through time and imagination.
This is the largest and most complete exhibition of its kind, comprising over 300 artifacts related to or belonging to Méliès himself, coming from the exclusive archives of the Cinémathèque and a 2004 acquisition from Méliès granddaughter, many of them rarely seen before.
The dark entourage of the halls add a touch of mystery, fittingly evoking the mood of mystery houses and magic shows of the victorian era. For, Georges Méliès began his professional life in magic, working at the Robert-Houdin Theatre in Paris as magician and director.
Méliès, a vivacious performer of inventive and jolly temperament, was first attracted to magic as a boy, becoming an accomplished illusionist.
However, in 1895, after watching the Lumière brothers’ screening of “Arrival of the train at La Ciotat station” (considered the first film ever), Méliès was inspired to use the spellbinding new media to expand his magic tricks, and deliver them to a much wider audience.
In the process, he created some of the cleverest tricks to date, and he immortalized himself, his collaborators, and the world in which they lived in.
The cleverness of his tricks and the vivacity of his actions still surprise today, more than a century later, despite the lack of sound and color of his films.
Video: The Rubber Head Man, 1901 (2:21)
Méliès is remarkable for having come up with effects that no one had thought of before, simply by using his knowledge of theatre magic, a basic understanding of film mechanics, and massive amounts of creativity and imagination.
In addition, Méliès created himself all the storylines, storyboards, backdrops, and costumes of each of his more than 500 films. In addition, he acted in them, directed his own processing lab, and was the director, editor, colorist, distributor and advertiser of his films. A veritable man-orchestra of seemingly unending energy and imagination.
The Museum gives visitors the rare chance to see the actual equipment used by Méliès, along with reconstructions of his costumes, original posters, a model of his Montreuil studio, and a replica of the Selenite costume used in “A voyage to the moon”, from 1902.
Méliès films were immensely popular, not only for their spectacular effects, but for its humor, which still cracks laughs today.
Video: The Chrysalis and the Butterfly, 1901 (1:59)
Méliès most ambitious film, "A voyage to the moon" was probably the first super production in film history, and as such the Museum dedicates a whole hall to it.
This film required a huge funding, several months of filming (most films were shot in a day or two), 30 different scenes, and over 800 feet of film (at around 13 minutes long, when most films were 2 minutes long).
It also included some of Méliès most complex tricks to date, many of which are so intricate that even film specialist still haven't figured out how they were made.
As any good magician, Méliès kept his tricks zealously secret, and never revealed his techniques to anyone.
An accomplished artist, Méliès painted his own storyboards for his films
The film “A voyage to the moon” was a huge success, but unfortunately, it was heavily pirated, specially in the United States, where Méliès had to open a branch office in order to protect his film rights.
By 1908, Méliès was creating up to 50 films per year. However, the turn of the century began to permeate the preferences of the public, who now steered away from fantastical stories in favour of more realistic plots.
The last three films produced by Méliès for French Pathè were flops, and he decided to quit the film industry altogether in 1912, sunk in heavy debts. With the onset of the Great War, Méliès was even forced to sell the celluloid in his films by the weight, so as to keep afloat.
Thus, many of his films and artworks were lost forever.
By 1923, after the end of the Great War, Méliès was forced to sell his Montreuil studio in order to pay part of his debts to Pathè and Gaumont. Unable to produce films for an audience who seemed more departed than ever from his fantastical confections, Méliès opened a Toy & Candy store at the Montparnasse train station in Paris, to make a living.
In 1929 he was spotted and recognized by a journalist, and a few months later a gala was organized in his honor. Since then, his work was rescued from oblivion, and his name never went back into obscurity.
If the story sounds familiar, it’s because Méliès was most recently paid tribute by the 2011 Martin Scorsese’s film “Hugo”, based on the 2007 Brian Selznik Book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret”.
In fact, the Museum received one of the automatons designed by Dante Ferretti for the film, as Scorsese’s token of gratitude to the Cinémathèque for opening their archives to him for his film.
A passionate collector of mechanical novelties and fantastical items, Méliès reportedly owned several of such automatons, and one of them is also included in the exhibition, not far from the “Hugo” automaton.
In addition to several well-known and rare Méliès films, the museum offers a look behind the scenes of some of his most celebrated tricks, such as the use of pyrotechnics, forced perspective, duplication, substitution, splices, and more.
Amazingly, most of these tricks are still applied, and were used in some of the most famous Sci-Fi and Fantasy films to date, such as Star Wars, Blade Runner, and The Lord of the Rings.
As a reminder of this, the exhibition also include a special selection of items related to this legacy, such as a sculpture of the Alien creature in Ridley Scott’s film, a model of a Blade Runner flying car, and a wall displaying some original Star Wars storyboards from 1977.
In addition to his technical genius, Méliès is credited with opening the first studio in cinema history (located at Montreuil), releasing the very first horror film, “Le Manoir du Diable” (1896), and the first serial film, “The Dreyfus Affair”(1899).
For all these, it’s no wonder that some of the greatest filmmakers to date consider Méliès more than an inspiration: “the father of all special effects”, as George Lucas expressed, or “a genius and a great magician”, as declared by Martin Scorsese.
The Méliès Museum is articulated with other exhibitions in the Museum covering the history of film making since its origins, allowing the public to not only watch Méliès’ films and see the actual equipment used for them and others - such as the Lumière brothers original camera, magic lanterns and a large zoetrope -, but also to connect all this work with the latest Special Effects technologies, such as motion capture and virtual reality, also on display.
Thus, visitors can experience the full arc of Méliès' film achievements, and understand better his legacy and enduring impact in film making.
We’ll never know for sure how much the work of Méliès influenced the art of film making and made it into what it is today. But we can be sure that his legacy inspired generations of new film makers, and established the grounds of modern cinema.
A visit to the Méliès Museum is a must for film lovers, and anyone with an interest in art, history, magic, dreams, and the art of make believe.
Location: Cinémathèque Francaise, 51 Rue de Bercy, Paris
Hours: Monday: 12 - 7pm , Tuesday (Closed), Wednesday to Friday: 12 - 7pm, Saturday and Sunday: 11 - 8pm.
Cost: 10 €. Concessions available. Guided visit: 12 €
More information: https://www.cinematheque.fr/cycle/melies-593.html
The exhibit includes accompanying texts in French, English and Spanish. A guided visit for hearing impaired visitors is also available.
To Learn More
*Want to learn more about Georges Méliès? Watch this quick and entertaining online exhibit by Google gallery:
*Explore some of the original drawings created by George Méliès for his films and other projects, at the collections of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art:
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