shorts from 1896-1901
Rating: No rating for shorts or collections of shorts. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Plot: Various plots. Or not plots at all. Most of these are magic tricks.
This is long overdue. I've enjoyed Melies' films in bunches, but haven't taken the time to watch this 13+ hour collection of what I assume is everything he made that is available. I haven't done the research to see if that's actually true or not. This covers disc one of this collection.
A lot of these films are cheap magic tricks because that's what Georges Melies was--a magician. Or maybe he really was a wizard. There were around 60 shorts on this disc, and as you'd probably expect, they're a little hit and miss. And some feel a little redundant after you see some of the same tricks utilized again and again. That doesn't make them any less mesmerizing, of course, as the beautiful backdrops, the display of early cinematic creativity, and the surreal imagery are just stunning.
Everything is so static with the shorts from this 5-year period. Most of these 60 pieces have one set and at least appear to be one continuous shot. Of course, there's a lot of superimposition going on here. Things start with the first remake in cinematic history, "The Card Game," about a group of people playing cards. Yes, it's as dull as it sounds, and I worried that a lot of these were actually going to be just filmed slice-of-life things that didn't showcase Melies' ingenuity. Silly fears as the rest of these, with the exception of one where a camera is mounted on a moving train which was still worth seeing, show off Melies work in his studio.
A series with a character named Dreyfus is a low point as all of those were too dull for me to even care about any narrative being shared. I also didn't care much for a lengthy (well, 9 minutes) Joan of Arc short. That one was also, for some reason, narrated. An extended "Blue Beard" story also lost my interest although it had its moments with bouncing keys and a great stabbing.
Some might argue that since you can see through the special effects and see obvious cuts, it diminishes the magic. I, however, chose to just believe in the magic since it's more fun that way.
And there's tons of magic to love here! Watch an ax chop a kid into a pair of boys; check out the removal of heads in several shorts including the awesomely-titled "Four Troublesome Heads" and, more violently, "The Cook's Revenge;" and loads of characters appearing and disappearing. Melies really enjoyed that move as he works his movie mojo to have figures and objects materialize and then completely vanish. "Nightmare," "The Haunted Castle," "The Magician," and "The Bewitched Inn" all utilize that little trick. There's more head with "Triple Conjurer and the Living Head," and eventually, Melies realizes that he has the ability to inflate things like heads and characters, taking advantage of that special effect in "The Man with the Rubber Head" (sounds like a Robyn Hitchcock title) and "The Devil and the Statue." Another effect that I enjoyed involved disembodiment or dismemberment with body parts removed and sometimes reassembled in shorts like the goofy "Fat and Lean Wrestling Match" and the misspelled "Extrordinay Illusions." Extrordinay? The latter used superimposition to whimsically detach limbs and heads while the latter used dummy parts and stop-animation to get the job done.
I mentioned the sets earlier, as well as the static shots. That is totally not a complaint here because a lot of these sets have all of these beautiful details. The time you get to spend with them, sometimes only around a minute in a few of these shorts, is great because you get to absorb all of those details.
Melies is at his best, I think, with the ones of these that involve dreams, usually surreal little nightmares where the subconscious plays practical jokes on the poor snoozers. Of those, my favorite is "The Astronomer's Dream," the first that uses a gigantic moon puppet with working eyeballs and eyebrows and a mouth that eventually regurgitates children.
Look at that fucking thing! Give me that over an X-man any day! No wonder Melies decided to reuse that monstrosity. When you create something as big and goofy as that motherfucker, you have to just keep rolling it out there, right?
At some point in this blog entry, I got a little drunk. Bloody Mary is my drink of choice. I apologize for the language.
Other highlights on this disc:
"After the Ball," a pervy short with the sexy undressing and bathing of a woman whom Sir Mix-a-Lot would have likely enjoyed. The use of hand-painted colors in "The Haunted Castle" and especially "Pillar of Fire" are also awesome. The colors in "Pillar" are just plain obscene!
Melies tells the last half of the Cinderella story, the first where I noticed actually scenery changes. It's not terrific, but it features nightmarish clocks that I liked a lot. I'm too lazy to research whether or not that's the first version of Cinderella ever filmed.
One really beautiful short shows a ship wreckage with superimposed fish and a dopey sailor dummy. It just has such a cool look, the kind of thing you figure Guy Maddin pleasures himself to.
Two of these use some tricks that Buster Keaton would later incorporate. "Nightmare" (and some others) reminded me of stuff in "Sherlock Jr.," but no, it does not diminish Keaton's brilliance. And "One-Man Band" has multiple Melies playing instruments just like in Keaton's "Playhouse." There are seven Melies! Buster did that more humorously and more effectively, but he has twenty years of other people playing with film and perfecting the craft to draw on.
One of my favorites was the possibly-blasphemous "The Devil in the Convent," one of a few where Melies plays a devil. He also shows off his dancing skills as a demon in "The Devil and the Statue."
I also really enjoyed the obvious use of dummies in a bunch of these. They were, arguably, less magical than the rest of Melies' effects.
Stay tuned for part two which will cover disc two.
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