Georges Méliès (December 8th 1861 - January 21st 1938) - of its complete name Marie Georges Jean Méliès - is a Réalisateur of Film S French. It is known for the developments which it brought to the techniques of the cinema, primarily in the field of the scenario and the fakings (well before they are renamed special Effets). He is the father of the special effects, the first Réalisateur and the creator of the first Movie studio.

Biography of Georges Méliès

Georges Méliès was born with Paris in France in a family from manufacturers from shoes. He works a time in the company of his father, before leaving for London in England in order to learn there the Prestidigitation and the automats and becomes the director of the theater Robert Houdin which he buys in 1888 to assemble there spectacles of conjuring and “great illusions”.

In 1891, it creates the Academy of Conjuring, which will be transformed into 1904 in Employers' federation of conjuring. He was the president during about thirty years. Georges Méliès liked to make turns of magic in the streets of Paris He impassions himself for the incipient Cinéma and contacts the Frères Light. Those dissuade some: the cinema profits according to them from an attraction from innovation , but its realization is expensive and the return on investment is not assured: Méliès could there be ruined. Waste of time and effort: it buys a projector with London and founds its own production company which it calls Star Film - without imagining the universal significance that these words were going to know.

Perhaps, moreover, the Lumière brothers wanted only to draw aside a competitor potential, because for their part they send teams of turning on all planet to bring back images in the rooms.

In 1897, it creates a studio glazed in its property of Montreuil and films its actors (of which often itself) in front of painted decorations directly inspired by the spectacles of magic of its theater. He also films, fault of being able to be on the spot, of the reconstituted current events in studio. He develops also a workshop of manual coloring of his films , largely proceeded inspired of what is done for the color application of photographs in black and white. It is made thus in turn producing, Réalisateur, Scénariste, Décorateur, machinist and Acteur.

Of 1896 with 1914, it realizes nearly six hundred “voyages through the impossible one”, as many small films enchanters, mysterious, naive, with the poetic beauty today sometimes out of date. Short films of a few minutes projected in fairs and seen like a simple evolution of the Magic lantern.

Its first important film, the Business Dreyfus (1899), is a 10 minutes reconstitution which testifies to its interest for political realism. If its Voyage in the Moon (1902), true masterpiece of photographic illusions and technical innovations, gains a certain success, G. Méliès does not manage however to compete with the companies with élevée.
production Here how his/her little girl, Madeleine Malthête-Méliès, report in 1961 this period: “Méliès ceased any cinematographic activity in 1913. It is in May of this same year that there lost his wife and remained alone with her two children, Georgette, born in 1888, of which I am the girl, and Andre, born in 1901. It could not have its funds as it wanted it because of the presence of his minor son in the succession. It was thus in an extremely muddled financial position when the war of 1914 burst, the Robert-Houdin Theater which had become a cinema with meeting of conjuring Sunday only was closed as of the beginning of the hostilities by order of the police force…”
From 1915 to 1923, Mélies will go up, with the assistance of its family, many spectacles in one of its two cinematographic studios transformed for the occasion into théâtre.
In 1923, continued by a creditor, it must resell his property and leaves Montreuil.
“All the cases containing films were sold to stallholders and disappeared. Méliès itself, in one moment of anger, burned its stock of Montreuil.” (Madeleine Malthête-Méliès).
Its films in majority destroyed or are sold (recovered with the weights and transformed into heel-pieces of shoes). In 1925 it finds one of its main actors, Jeanne d' Alcy. She holds a shop of toys and sugar refineries in the Gare Montparnasse. He marries it and they deal together with the shop. It is there that it will be found by Leon Druhot, director of Movies-Newspaper, which will make it leave the lapse of memory.

Its work is redécouverte by the surrealist and it obtains the Légion of honor in 1931.

In 1932, it is placed at the castle of Orly, old people's home of the Mutual insurance company of the cinema (the Mutual insurance company of the cinema was founded in 1921 per Leon Brézillon, President of the French trade union of the owners of the cinematograph), it will finish there its life with his wife Jeanne D' Alcy.

It rests with the Father-Lachaise with Paris.

Little time before the death of G. Méliès, in 1938, Henri Langlois, creator of the French Cineclub, manages to save part of its films and the restoration directs from there. With the hinge of the theater and cinema, G. Méliès - on the subject of which D.W. Griffith declared “I owe him all” - was a true “inventor”, the inventor of the cinema of entertainment. Since 1946, the Price Méliès crown each year the best French film or of French coproduction.

Selective catalog of films

One estimates that in seventeen years of activity, Georges Méliès realized nearly 600 short films from 1 to 40 minutes, by privileging three kinds: fairyhood, science fiction and the historical reconstitution.

See too

External bonds

• the friends of Georges Méliès
• the catalog of films supplements of Georges Méliès
• a nonofficial site
• special Page Georges Méliès
• melies---190 the voyage in the moon whole Film commentépar narrator

Quotations

D.W. Griffith known as of Méliès: I owe him all. and Charles Chaplin will add It was the alchemist of the light.

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