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| Georges Méliès | |
|---|---|
 Georges Méliès | |
| Born | Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès December 8 1861 Paris |
| Died | January 21 1938 (aged 76) Paris |
| Years active | 1896-1914 |
| Spouse(s) | Jeanne d\'Alcy (1926-1938) |
Georges Méliès (December 8, 1861 – January 21, 1938), full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was born in Paris, where his family manufactured shoes.
He was very innovative in the use of special effects. He accidentally discovered the stop trick, or substitution, in 1896, and was one of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted colour in his films. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality with the cinematography, Méliès is sometimes referred to as the "Cinemagician."
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Before making films, he was a stage magician at the Theatre Robert-Houdin. In 1895, he became interested in film after seeing a demonstration of the Lumière brothers\' camera. In 1897, he established a studio on a rooftop property in Montreuil. Actors performed in front of a painted set as inspired by the conventions of magic and musical theater. He directed 531 films between 1896 and 1914, ranging in length from one to forty minutes. In subject matter, these films are often similar to the magic theater shows that Méliès had been doing, containing "tricks" and impossible events, such as objects disappearing or changing size.
His most famous film is A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la Lune) made in 1902, which includes the celebrated scene in which a spaceship hits the eye of the man in the moon. Also famous is The Impossible Voyage (Le voyage à travers l\'impossible) from 1904. Both of these films are about strange voyages, somewhat in the style of Jules Verne. These are considered to be some of the most important early science fiction films, although their approach is closer to fantasy.
In addition horror cinema can be traced back to Georges Méliès\'s Le Manoir du diable (1896).
His 1899 short film Cleopatra was believed to be a lost film until a copy was discovered in 2005 in Paris.
In 1913 Georges Méliès\' film company was forced into bankruptcy by the large French and American studios and his company was bought out of receivership by Pathé Frères. After being driven out of business Méliès became a toy salesman at the Montparnasse station. In 1932 the Cinema Society gave Méliès a home in Château d\'Orly. Méliès did not grasp the value of his films, and with some 500 films recorded on cellulose, the French Army seized most of this stock to be melted down into boot heels during World War I. Many of the other films were sold to be recycled into new film. As a result many of these films do not exist today. In time, Méliès was rediscovered and honored for his work, eventually taking up stage performance.
Melies began what was later known as the Cinema of Attractions, a style of early film production that worked with only the prescenium space. The director would set up the camera and then perform actions in front of the camera, (This area in front of the camera being known as the prescenium space, containing no depth to the images) The Lumiere Brothers, Edison Kinetoscope Films, Black Maria, all aspects of the Cinema of Attractions.
Georges Méliès has been awarded the Légion d\'honneur (Legion of honor).
Méliès died in Paris and he was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Georges Méliès directed hundreds of films including:
The work of Georges Méliès has been referenced a number of times in film, television and fiction, including:
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