Méliès, Georges

Méliès, Georges

Méliès

(credit: Rene Dazy—J.P. Ziolo)

(born Dec. 8, 1861, Paris, France—died Jan. 21, 1938, Paris) French filmmaker. He was a professional magician and manager-director of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris when he saw the first movies made by Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1895. In his film experiments he exploited the basic camera tricks of slow motion, dissolve, and fade-out. The first to film fiction narratives, from 1899 to 1912 he made more than 400 films, which combined illusion, comic burlesque, and pantomime in fantasy productions, including A Trip to the Moon (1902). He also filmed reconstructed news events as an early form of newsreel. Overtaken by the commercial growth of the film industry, he was forced to sell his studio in 1913.

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Méliès, Georges 

Born Dec. 8, 1861, in Paris; died there Jan. 21, 1938. French actor, director, magician and theater and film entrepreneur.

Méliès was one of the founders of French and world cinema. He invented the basic techniques of modern trick photography and produced ingenious film fantasies, including A Trip to the Moon (1902), The Voyage Across the Impossible (1904), 200,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1907), and The Conquest of the Pole (1912), and screen adaptations of actual events of his time, including Sea Battle in Greece (1897) and The Coronation of Ed-ward VII (1902). Méliès made approximately 400 films. The term “Méliès tendency”in film studies refers to a vivid film production whose principal merit lies in the cinematographer’s ability to transform reality.

REFERENCES

Sadoul, G. Vseobshchaiia istoriia kino, vols. 1-2. Moscow, 1958. (Translated from French.)
Bessy, M., and J. M. Lo Duca. Georges Méliès, mage. Paris, 1945.
Sadoul, G. Georges Méliès. Paris, 1961.