Marie Georges Jean Méliès : 1861 - 1938 One of the giants of the early French cinema, Georges Méliès (1861-1938) was also the cinema's first great fantasist. Whereas fellow pioneers such as Louis Lumière saw the cinema as essentially a recording device, taking snapshots of reality, Méliès saw it as a springboard for his own imagination, which had been developed over a decade as a conjuror, illusionist and theatre owner/manager. If ever a man was in the right place at the right time, Méliès was - the Lumière Brothers' presentation of the first ever projected film screenings in late1895 occurred at precisely the point when Méliès, having experimented with magic lantern techniques, was looking for a new medium in which to expand his repertory of stage effects. A career in cinema was obviously not an option when Méliès was born in Paris in 1861, though from an early age he showed a strong interest in the arts (including stage design and puppetry), which led to a place at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He continued his studies in London in 1884 (his family intended him to learn English before entering his parents' footwear business), where he developed a keen interest in stage conjury after seeing the work of Maskelyne and Cooke. Returning to Paris, he took over his father's business after the latter's retirement, which meant that he was able to raise the money when the famous Théâtre Robert-Houdin was put up for sale in 1888. From then on Méliès worked full time as a theatrical showman, putting on performances that revolved around the magic and illusionistic techniques that he had studied in London, augmented with his own technical tricks. From 1896 he showed films regularly at his theatre, and later that year an event occurred that has since passed into film folklore. Filming a banal street scene, Méliès' camera jammed, and he had to spend a few seconds fixing it before he could recommence filming. When he processed the film, he was struck by the way objects suddenly appeared, disappeared or were transformed into other objects (the most famous example he cited was the carriage turning into a hearse). This happy accident caused him to discover the cinema's unprecedented capacity for manipulating and distorting time and space, and he expanded this simple principle into a series of complex special effects, pioneering the first double exposure (La Caverne maudite, 1898), the first split-screen shot with performers acting opposite themselves (Un Homme de tête, 1898) and the first dissolve (Cendrillon, 1899), and laying the foundations for countless special effects blockbusters. Indeed, until the relatively recent introduction of computer-generated imagery (CGI), many of the special effects used in such films as Star Wars and Superman are in terms of basic technique little different from what Méliès was doing nearly a century earlier. These techniques were used to make hundreds of short films, a handful of which still survive, and some of which, like 1902's Le Voyage dans la lune, impress audiences today (the image of the moon, grimacing after the rocket has hit it squarely in the eye, is probably the oldest cinema still that even non-film buffs would recognise). Though undoubtedly most famous today for his pioneering work in the cinema of the fantastic, Méliès also tackled a wide range of other subjects, churning out everything from advertising films to serious dramas (1898's L'Affaire Dreyfus, released when its subject-matter was still very much a contemporary issue). He was also one of the pioneers of screen nudity, with Après le Bal. Sadly, but all too frequently in the case of great pioneers, Méliès' career ended ignominiously. Extensively pirated by commercial rivals and faced with a shrinking market once the novelty of his films wore off, he abandoned film production in 1912, and in 1915 he was forced to convert his studio back into a variety theatre, where he resumed his pre-film career. Bankruptcy, and the demolition of his beloved theatre, followed in 1923, though there was a happy ending of sorts -the French have always taken cinema intensely seriously as an art form, and his substantial contribution started to be recognised in the late 1920s. Fame and fortune did not follow, but he was awarded the Legion of Honour and a rent-free apartment in which he spent the last few years of his life. He died in 1938.

Source: http://filament.illumin.co.uk/svank/biog/melies/melies.html One of the visionary pioneers of the cinema, Georges Méliès was born to a boot manufacturer and passed through adolescence exhibiting two talents: for drawing and for making cardboard Punch & Judy shows. During his military service he was stationed near the home of Robert Houdin, the magician whose optical illusions had captivated Méliès as a child, and whose theater he would eventually buy after he escaped from his family job as overseer of factory machinery. When the Lumière brothers (Louis and Auguste) unveiled their Cinématographe in public on December 28, 1895, Méliès was not only present, but clearly the most affected member of the audience. Frustrated when the Lumières would not sell him the machine, he sought out R.W. Paul and his Animatographe in London. Méliès then built his own camera-projector and was able to present his first film screening on April 4, 1896. Méliès began by screening the films of others, mainly those made on the Edison Kinetoscope, but within months he was showing his own works; these were apparently one-reel views, usually consisting of one shot lasting sixty seconds. Although Méliès is often credited with inventing the narrative film by relating stories as opposed to simply depicting landscapes or single events, this is not strictly true; many of the Lumière brothers' films were also much more than simple, static views. Méliès's signal contribution to the cinema was to combine his experience as a magician and theater owner with the new invention of motion pictures in order to present spectacles of a kind not possible in the live theater. Within nine months, Méliès had increased the length of the filmed entertainment (his last film of 1896 consisted of three, three-minute reels) and was making regular use of previously unimaginable special effects, such as making performers disappear by stopping his camera in mid-shot. As the year ended he was also completing a glass-walled studio where he could make films without fear of the elements. From 1897 to 1904 Méliès made hundreds of films, the great majority now lost. The scores of prints which survive show why his contemporaries were both initially impressed, and ultimately bored. Méliès regarded the story in his films to be a mere "thread intended to link the 'effects' … I was appealing to the spectator's eyes alone." Failing to develop any consistent ideas, his entertainments consisted only of a succession of magical tableaux peopled by Méliès (who often dressed as the conjurer or the devil) and young women recruited from the theaters of Paris, performing against flat, painted backdrops. Méliès's own resources and interest in these films apparently began to dwindle after 1905, partly due to competition from other filmmakers and rising costs, partly because of the growing industrialization of the French film industry, and partly due to his wish to continue presenting live programs at the Théâtre Robert Houdin. By 1911 he had ceased independent distribution; by the time France entered WWI in 1914 his career as a producer-director had ended. His best-known surviving works are A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902), THE MELOMANIAC (1903), AN IMPOSSIBLE VOYAGE (1904) and THE CONQUEST OF THE POLE, (1912, his last year of production).

Source: http://www.wabash.edu/depart/theater/THAR4/Melies.htm The life of George Méliès is the stuff of great fiction. As a child, Méliès found an escape from his family's machinery business by skipping off to Paris theaters, where he was captivated by the optical illusions of magician Robert Houdin. By age 34, Méliès would own the Houdin Theater, where he himself would perform illusions. In 1895, Méliès saw a demonstration of the Lumière brothers' Cinematographe in Paris, the first public display of motion pictures. After unsuccessful attempts to purchase a system from the Lumières, Méliès rushed home to build his own camera-projector. A presentation of films at Méliès's theater just four months later consisted of shorts made at the Thomas Edison studio in conjunction with a live program of magic. But the Edison shorts, like the Lumière previews, were 60 second recordings of factory workers leaving for home. This was not the bill of fare a magician could combine with live theater. So Méliès set out to make his own films. He built a studio and designed elaborate sets and costumes. He crafted scripts and recruited pretty French girls. And then he filmed his fantastic stories, experimenting with camera tricks like slow motion, dissolves, fade-outs, and superimposition. By trial and error, he learned to make performers disappear by stopping his camera in mid-shot. These films were wildy successful and imitated in the United States. As the master of ceremonies, Méliès often dressed as a conjurer who could dismember the limbs of victims through special effects. Most of these films were less than ten minutes long, and between 1897 and 1904, Méliès created more than 400 of them, a great majority of which have since been lost. What Méliès entries lacked in theme and execution he made up in energy and imagination. Even his mini-epics CLEOPATRA (1899) and HAMLET (1908), show his knack for sheer entertainment. He made over 500 films in all, financing, directing, photographing, and acting in nearly every one. The enormous popularity of A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902) put the fiction film first and changed the course of motion picture production. At one time the world's largest producer, piracy and rising costs of independent distribution caught up with Méliès in 1905, and before WWI his film career was over. He tried briefly to revive the Theatre Houdin, but died penniless at 77.

Source: http://www.film100.com/ Prestidigitateur (à la galerie Vivienne et au musée Grévin), fabricant d'automates, propriétaire et directeur (depuis 1888) du "théatre d'illusions Robert-Houdin", Georges Méliès (1861-1938) fut tout "naturellement" subjugué par la première séance de cinématographe du 28 décembre 1895. N'ayant pu acheter l'appareil, il construit sa propre caméra, enregistre quelques- unes des scènes d'illusionnisme qu'il donnait au théatre, avant de se lancer dans la réalisation de récits fantasmagoriques et de véritables fééries, truffées de trucages, dont certains inventés pour l'écran (fondus, surimpressions, arrêts sur image, montages inversés), et coloriées à la main. Pour ce faire, il crée la Star Film et inaugure à Montreuil-sous-Bois, en mars 1897, un "atelier de prises de vues cinématographiques", équipé de manière à réaliser des films avec mise en scène, scénario, acteurs et décors, premières fictions du cinéma français. Ses oeuvres les plus célèbres sont Au Royaume des fées, L'Homme à la tête de caoutchouc, Le Livre magique et surtout son Voyage dans la lune (1903), inspiré de Jules Verne et de H.G. Wells, voyage entrepris par le Club des astronomes, présidé par le professeur Barbenfouille. Ce film extrêmement populaire marque l'apogée du talent et de la carrière de Méliès, qui ne pourra résister au développement de l'industrie du cinématographe, et ne saura s'adapter au renouvellement des genres en vigueur à partir de 1910.

Source: http://www.pratique.fr/~chtrain/Lumiere.html Georges Méliès (b. Dec. 8, 1861, Paris, France d. Jan. 21, 1938, Paris), early French experimenter with motion pictures, the first to film fictional narratives. When the first genuine movies, made by the Lumière brothers, were shown in Paris in 1895, Méliès, a professional magician and manager-director of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, was among the spectators. The films were scenes from real life having the novelty of motion, but Méliès saw at once their further possibilities. He acquired a camera, built a glass-enclosed studio near Paris, wrote scripts, designed ingenious sets, and used actors to film stories. With a magician's intuition he discovered and exploited the basic camera tricks: stop motion, slow motion, dissolve, fade-out, superimposition, and double exposure. From 1899 to 1912 Méliès made more than 400 films, the best of which combine illusion, comic burlesque, and pantomime to treat themes of fantasy in a playful and absurd fashion. He specialized in depicting extreme physical transformations of the human body (such as the dismemberment of heads and limbs) for comic effect. His films included pictures as diverse as Cléopâtre (1899; "Cleopatra"), Le Christ marchant sur les eaux (1899; "Christ Walking on the Waters"), Le Voyage dans la lune (1902; "A Trip to the Moon"), Le Voyage à travers l'impossible (1904; "The Voyage Across the Impossible"); and Hamlet (1908). He also filmed studio reconstructions of news events as an early kind of newsreel. It never occurred to him to move the camera for close-ups or long shots. The commercial growth of the industry forced him out of business in 1913, and he died in poverty.

Source: Britannica Online Georges Méliès, a professional magician by training, first saw the new "moving pictures" in 1895. Little over a year later, Méliès was filming and projecting his own creations. By accident, he discovered that he could use stop-motion photography to render trick visual effects. Méliès was also the first to use techniques such as the fade-in, the fade-out, and the dissolve to create the first real narrative films. Méliès made over 500 films, but his most famous, Voyage dans la lune, Le (1902) (Voyage to the Moon) made him a fortune. Still, Méliès, trained in classic eighteenth century theater, conceived all of his films in terms of fully played-out scenes. Unable to keep up with the changing industry, the end of his life was wrought with poverty, yet his films would be monumental stepping stones for great auteurs such as D.W. Griffith. Biography (print) Hammond, Paul, 1974, Marvelous Méliès Méliès, Georges, 1938, Mes Memoires Biographical movies Grand Méliès, Le (1952)

Source: Michael Kaminsky, Internet Movie Database