Méliès the Magician

It isn’t often I do a DVD review, but then, when what I’m review­ing is a bunch of stuff from the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry, I guess you have to make do. I final­ly sat down and watched all of Méliès the Magi­cian a DVD that has been rest­ing on my tele­vi­sion for quite some time now.

I’d seen a few of his fan­tas­magor­i­cal films over the years, but I want­ed to actu­al­ly own a col­lec­tion of his stuff, he is prob­a­bly my sec­ond favorite silent film per­son, after Buster Keaton. This par­tic­u­lar DVD has a 2 hour 10 minute doc­u­men­tary on the man, which is real­ly long. The direc­tor, Jacques Mény, did an excel­lent job out­lin­ing Méliès the man by describ­ing the envi­ron­ment and small actions that shaped him. It did not deal with his per­son­al life, or only in pass­ing, as it affect­ed his film­mak­ing. This struck me as respect­ful and quite at odds with Amer­i­can bio­graph­i­cal doc­u­men­taries, which seem to scrounge up any and all dirt pos­si­ble.

At first the style and shape of the film seems prim­i­tive or cheap, but it grows on you and becomes endear­ing. Mény made the doc­u­men­tary take us back to pre-war Paris. It man­ages to make one feel rem­i­nis­cent for turn of the cen­tu­ry France, even if you weren’t alive then.

After the doc, there is Méliès Mag­ic Show, which is arranged just like it would have been in the ear­ly 1900s. Méliès’s grand­daugh­ter acts as the bark­er, explain­ing the action in the films, and Eric Le Guen, an impro­vi­sa­tion­al pianist, pro­vides the musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment. There are 15 of Méliès’s films, and the show lasts about 55 min­utes. Includ­ed are the clas­sics: Trip to the Moon, One Man Band, The Music Lover, and The Man with the Rub­ber Head; and plen­ty of oth­ers as well.

If watch­ing the films as they would have been seen in the 1900s isn’t your thing, you can select each film indi­vid­u­al­ly through the chap­ter menu. The DVD is worth every pen­ny, pro­vid­ing you like Méliès.

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