The movie Hugo has thrown the spotlight back on this cinematic pioneer. He was truly ahead of his time but also a victim of his own intransience.
George Melies created the first fantasy films and in the process created modern movie making. It can’t be stated any plainer than that. The movie Hugo takes some dramatic license with the great man’s life and work but one thing is true; before Melies films were about trains pulling into stations or waves crashing on the beach. George Melies had a spacecraft smash into the Moon’s face. The former stage magician dared to use the camera to capture his imagination and in the process helped turn film into the movies.
Even now it’s pretty hard to fully appreciate just what Melies did and when he did it. He created special effects without editing equipment or even electric lights. He shot his films in a specially constructed glass house because that was the only light source available. Melies used what he knew, painted sets and theatrical pyrotechnics. But he quickly learned the camera could create its own magic. If he stopped the camera and started it again he could make a character disappear. If he kept part of the aperture covered he could rewind the film and create duplicates of his own head.
He created fantasy films when fantasy literature was in its infancy. Tolkien was far in the future. Weird Tales wouldn’t reach its pinnacle until after World War I. Even Edgar Rice Burroughs didn’t publish his first fantasies until Melies was in decline. When he started William Morris had only just published the Story of the Glittering Plain.
But Melies was ahead of his time in another, sad way. What Hugo leaves out is that Uncle George faded into obscurity mostly because of his own limitations as a filmmaker. After The Great Train Robbery, filmmakers finally learned how to tell a coherent story. Melies however remained stuck in his ways. He created fantastic sequences but had no use for plot or character. Sound familiar? George Melies was one of the first filmmakers and he was definitely the first film technocrat. And he suffered a fate that many technocrats are familiar with. He wouldn’t be the last fantasy filmmaker to value effects over story.
Next up: Metropolis
0 comments:
Post a Comment