Georges Méliès Trailers
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Georges Méliès (December 8, 1861 - January 21, 1938), full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French illusionist and filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. One of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, tracking shots, dissolves, and hand-painted color in his work, Méliès pioneered effects that would define cinematic special effects for decades to come. A prolific innovator in the use of special effects, Méliès accidentally discovered the substitution stop trick in 1896, a method of creating seamless disappearing and/or appearing effects used throughout both films and television for decades to come. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality through cinematography, Méliès is sometimes referred to as the first "Cinemagician".
Two of his best-known films are A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904). Both stories involve strange, surreal voyages, somewhat in the style of Jules Verne, and are considered among the most important early science fiction films, though their approach is closer to fantasy. Méliès was also an early pioneer of horror cinema, which can be traced back to his Le Manoir du diable (1896).
In early 1909 Méliès stopped making films to protest Thomas Edison's Motion Pictures Parents Company monopoly, and presided over the first meeting of the International Filmmakers Congress in Paris. Further financial hardships created by his opposition to Edison and diminishing influence, Méliès disappeared from public life. By the mid-1920s he made a meager living as a candy and toy salesma in Paris, with the assistance of funds collected by other filmmakers. Although he was recognized for his contributions in cinema, Méliès spent most of his later years in poverty before being accepted into La Maison du Retraite du Cinéma, the film industry's retirement home in Orly.
Most Popular Georges Méliès Trailers
Total trailers found: 353
02 January 2021
A documentary that details the process of restoring 270 of the 520 lost films of pioneering director Georges Méliès, all orchestrated by a Franco-American collaboration between Lobster Films, the National Film Center, and the Library of Congress.
01 January 1900
The picture opens with the Sultan lying down to rest on his luxurious cushioned couch. The scene changes to the grounds around the palace.
04 November 1899
The first movie ever censored for political reasons. The title refers to the then contemporaneous Dreyfus affair in which a Jewish military officer was falsely convicted of treason, and it was alleged that he was framed due to anti-semitism.
15 June 1902
Professor Barbenfouillis and five of his colleagues from the Academy of Astronomy travel to the Moon aboard a rocket propelled by a giant cannon.
19 April 1903
A juggler enters upon the scene, picks up a skull, throws it into the air, catches it in his hands, where it is transformed into a handkerchief.
01 January 1898
The scene opens in an artist's studio where the unfinished statue of William Tell stands upon a pedestal.
25 November 1979
Tribute to Segundo de Chomón. Semi-documentary featuring short films and appearances by actors who explain his works, such as Inma de Santis, Jesús Gúzman, and Ana Mariscal.
01 January 1896
A soldier stands guard at a sentry box and leaves it unprotected for a moment, a moment that two men take advantage of to put up posters where it is prohibited.
01 January 1900
A magician performs tricks involving three women, who are sometimes merged together into one corpulent female.
07 May 1913
An indebted French family flees its creditors in this comic picaresque, one of pioneering French director George Méliès last films.
15 March 1902
A human skeleton is placed upon a table by an attendant. When the attendant leaves the room the skeleton begins kicking his legs and throwing his arms about and suddenly turns into a magician.
01 January 1897
An officer calls his sailors to the deck. They assemble around the canon while the officer scans the horizon.
01 January 1899
A knight performs several magic tricks with a disembodied head materialized from a chalkboard drawing.
08 August 1900
The entire story of Christmastide is here depicted. The scene opens in a large boudoir of an apparently wealthy man's home.
25 July 1903
At the royal court, a prince is presenting the princess whom he is pledged to marry when a witch suddenly appears.
18 May 1897
An incident of the Franco-Prussian War. It shows the bombardment of a house at Bazeille. It is the animated reproduction of de Neuville's celebrated painting.
31 May 1897
The Flicker Alley DVD "Georges Méliès: Encore New Discoveries (1896-1911)" misidentified a partial hand-colored print of the 1906 film "Alchimiste Parafaragaramus ou La cornue infernale" (The Mysterious Retort) as this film, "L'hallucination de l'alchimiste" (An Hallucinated Alchemist) from 1897, which continues to be considered a lost film.
01 January 1900
A family sits down to enjoy a meal that ends up being fraught with complications.
01 September 1899
One of eleven installments of The Dreyfus Affair (L'affaire Dreyfus), a docudrama reconstructing the historical Dreyfus Affair, which was still playing out as the series was being filmed.
22 June 1901
A magician does tricks with the aid of his assistant, the Human Pump.
20 May 1899
Méliès appears as a court jester (a “triboulet” in French). He pulls 18th century noblemen out of a trunk and arranges them on a pyramid-shaped stage.
23 December 1904
A poor family in a rundown house where snow falls through the broken roof, there's no coal to heat the pathetic little stove, mother is sick, father sends daughter out to beg.
15 January 1904
Only 8 surviving seconds of a man getting great pleasure from smoking a cigar.
06 March 1906
A crazy, rude musician gets some supernatural comeuppance.
01 January 1899
A devil wearing bat-like wings and brandishing a trident dances around a giant pot, conjuring forth flame from his trident to lit a fire beneath the pot.
20 December 1902
Georges Méliès adaptation of Robinson Crusoe, the first film adaptation of the story. Filmed in black & white, Méliès would then paint the film by hand to colour it.
27 December 1905
An inventor dreams that his newly designed airship takes flight.
01 January 1896
This lost film presumably features a train arriving at Vincennes station, eastern Paris. (Until 2020, was confused with Arrival at Joinville flipbook.
31 August 1979
Explores the complex relationship between the spirit, body, and mind. The film is a nightmare with closed eyes because it counts among the most terrible moments of my life, my second exile, which lasted a very long time.
20 May 1899
A bearded man hangs up a wreath and, like any good magician, waves his hands inside of it and under �
01 January 1897
A woman arrives home after the ball. Her servant helps her undress and bathe.
01 January 1896
Georges Méliès lost film.
22 November 1899
In a square room, two men and two women, in white body-hugging clothes, try on wrestling holds, each with a partner of the same sex.
25 October 1902
In this film, we show the interior of a doctor's office. A patient enters, and judging from the expression on his face, he is in great pain.
01 January 1897
Three military men, seen inside a fortification, are firing on an unseen enemy force. The call for reinforcements but ladders appear signalling the enemy is about to overrun this position.
01 January 1900
A monkey wreaks havoc on a doctor.
18 May 1897
Two crooks throw a lady off a roof, and a hapless policeman tries to capture them.
01 October 1899
A fairy godmother magically turns Cinderella's rags to a beautiful dress, and a pumpkin into a coach. Cinderella goes to the ball, where she meets the Prince - but will she remember to leave before the magic runs out?
01 January 1896
A woman dances - preserved in flipbook form.
21 February 1903
Pluto, having seen the earth, comes back home amazed at the success of that well-known dance, the "cake-walk.
25 December 1896
A man has a fantastical nightmare involving, among other things, a grinning malevolent moon.
23 May 1899
A reenactment of a scene inside Devil's Island prison.
01 January 1896
A soldier is talking to a woman while sitting on a bench, a man sits on it, and the soldier stands up, causing the bench to tip over and the man falls.
29 October 1904
Using every known means of transportation, several savants from the Geographic Society undertake a journey through the Alps to the Sun which finishes under the sea.
01 January 1899
A man makes twenty complete changes in two minutes, combining with them dances. The changes are made in full sight of the audience.
03 October 1903
Two men in a cave perform magic.
09 August 1903
Alone in his room at an inn, a lustful old man is haunted by spirits.
01 January 1896
A man tries to get a good night's sleep, but is disturbed by a giant spider that leaps onto his bed, and a battle ensues in hilarious comic fashion.
14 January 1908
An episodic narrative displaying examples of humankind's brutality, from the story of Cain and Abel through the Hague Convention of 1907.
01 January 1900
This film is presumed lost.
08 December 2011
An account of the extraordinary life of film pioneer Georges Méliès (1861-1938) and the amazing story of the copy in color of his masterpiece A Trip to the Moon (1902), unexpectedly found in Spain and restored thanks to the heroic efforts of a group of true cinema lovers.
17 February 1907
The film, a parody of the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, follows a fisherman, Yves, who dreams of traveling by submarine to the bottom of the ocean, where he encounters both realistic and fanciful sea creatures, including a chorus of naiads played by dancers from the Théâtre du Châtelet.
01 September 1905
An early horror treatment of the hero's encounter with the one-eyed man-eating Cyclops.
06 May 1904
A cook has his hands full with three mischievous devils, who pop in and out of his kitchen.
05 December 1903
The German legend of a scholar's unholy pact with the Devil would have been very familiar to most moviegoers (at least European ones), so Georges Méliès' early cinematic treatment likely got away with simply offering a fancifully illustrated late episode without the earlier narrative context (however, spoken narration provides some of the latter in this restored print).
10 January 1909
Doctors blow to pieces a patient in a hydrotherapy machine and re-assemble him.
01 January 1899
The clown and his automobile enters with great puffs of smoke
17 April 1903
In a corner of the garden we see an ornamental fountain. An old professor comes along, looking for a nice spot where he can teach his pupils.
01 January 1897
A man pulls a rabbit out of a hat. Available in a fragment in flipbook version only.
28 February 2012
A look back at the life, style and influences of the famed filmmaker Georges Méliès and an examination of his role in the story of "Hugo.
