L'Homme-orchestre

Georges Melies was the founder of special effects in movies. Its really quite wonderful watching these little shorts: imagine you had the opportunity to realise for the first time the things that were possible with filmed images. By filming a scene, then removing or moving one element and filming it again and editing the two shots together you can make things disappear or jump from one side of the room to the other. This is true magic, and watching Melies discover these things is a special thing i'm glad i've had the opportunity to see.

Aside from this value, the shorts still retain their immense fun for audiences an entire century after their creation. Now THAT is called staying power.

In this short, Melies clones himself six times to fill six seats of an orchestra, then makes the seats disappear, then reappear, then makes himself disappear in a cloud of smoke. The music, i believe is Robert Israel, a great modern composer who's been doing us the honour of writing scores for many great silent movies, which adds immeasurably to our enjoyment of them.

One-Man Band, The (1900)

*** (out of 4)

aka L'Homme orchestre

This here is one of director Melies best known and loved films. Melies plays a band leader and we see his spirits or doubles, come to life and make for an entire band. Buster Keaton would somewhat redo this film two decades later in The Play House and in my opinion it can't hold a candle to this film. The special effects hold up quite well and the way the spirits come to be is nicely done. Melies was certainly a genius and this is one of the highlights of his career.

In this short film Georges Mélies makes the first use of double-exposing, making seven "clones" of Himself playing an orchestra. The trick is now easy to do, but then it was quite expensive to film seven different shots to one roll of film. Although Mélies makes a professional and well-coordinated work.

There are seven chairs lined up on stage. A man (Melies) fills on, and then reproduces himself and fills the next, and so on. Each of the incarnations has a musical instrument. First they play in a conventional way, but eventually they will merge and become one man again. There is some clever reshuffling on the stage. One of the better ones.

This is one of the earlier displays of the wit and camera wizardry of movie pioneer Georges Méliès. The idea is a simple one, but by no means an easy one to carry off using the resources of the time. Méliès also adds a few interesting details to the high-quality camera tricks.

The same idea was used later on by other silent screen comedians, most notably by Buster Keaton in his wonderful feature, "The Playhouse". This much earlier movie is quite a bit simpler, but considering its era it is almost as impressive. Méliès plays a band-leader and each member of the band, using multiple exposures and other carefully crafted special effects to create an amusing scene.

As Méliès gained even more experience, his features often added lavishly detailed settings to the fine visual effects. This 1900 movie relies mostly on the central idea, without too much background detail, but his technique is already excellent, and this is one of many entertaining Méliès features that demonstrate his considerable creativity and skill.