User reviews

Once again, this fixation with the dark world. Here, a princess has been kidnapped by the Devil. He takes her away to his lair somewhere. The prince has to find her and release her. Satan is helped by an evil man whom he intimidates into helping him. This film had more devils than normal, coming in all sizes and shapes. What these films always suffer from is a clarity of direction of the plot, sacrificing story for spectacle. I suppose this is justified by giving audiences visuals they may have never seen before. Still, I wonder if their level of sophistication was heightened and these presentations became old hat. There are some fun things in this movie. After watching Melies play the Devil so many time, I still get a kick out of his emotive being.

"The Knight of the Snow" is one of the last films Georges Méliès made. By now, he was under contract for his former rival Pathé, where he made a few of his most-lavish productions, including this one. Here, Méliès performed in front of the camera as the Devil, for what I assume was the last time--a role he played numerous times throughout his oeuvre, including in "The Devil in the Convent" (1899), "The Infernal Cake-Walk", "The Infernal Cauldron", "The Damnation of Faust" (all three from 1903), "Faust and Marguerite" (1904), "The Merry Frolics of Satan" (1906) and "Satan in Prison" (1907). His incarnation of Satan this time is a sprightly antagonist who kidnaps a princess by locking her in a cage and taking off through the sky in a dragon-pulled carriage. Even after the princess has been rescued by the hero, the prince of darkness gets the last laugh by "rescuing" his villainous pawn from being hung by men dressed like monks with Klansmen hoods and taking him down the trap door, to what one assumes is Hell.

An interesting aspect of these later Méliès films is his adoption of some cinematic techniques that he had shunned earlier in his career. One sequence seems to have some scene dissection with a POV shot as the Knight peers through a telescope at the dragon carriage. And there's a panning tracking shot of the knight as he crawls through a cave to rescue the princess from a dungeon. Otherwise, there are plenty of the usual Méliès tropes: theatricality with the cinematically-edited special effects, the fairy guiding the hero, the journey structure and dancing girls.

The stature of Georges Melies, once the master of cinema, had diminished so badly by 1912 that he was little more than a throwback to an earlier, primitive art form. One in which the camera seemed to be anchored to the floor, when narrative was a novelty, and when audiences could be awed by simple camera tricks. The Knight of the Snow has little plot, but what there is is poorly conveyed - due mainly to Melies apparent refusal to use intertitles. The sets are impressive, but they still hark back to an earlier era, and the special effects are all recycled.

This Georges Méliès film is his 528th picture...and he only made a few more after ultimately quitting films in 1913. I mention this because although Méliès change some with the times (such as making this film 16 minutes long as opposed to his early films which were 1-2 minutes in length), he also failed to adapt to the times as well. In particular, I have noticed that in none of the 150-200 films of his that I've seen (perhaps more), he never uses intertitle cards. While this was not unusual for 1986 when he started making films (as no one used them then), by 1912 they were often used and allowed for a more complicated story AND meant folks didn't need to overly exaggerate on screen to convey what was happening. Now this does not mean that subtlety was the norm for 1912...it wasn't. But it was becoming more subtle and stories could be more easily told than before.

I mention all this because if you watch this film, doubtless you'll be confused beyond expectations because of the lack of these explanatory cards or dialog. Too often, folks gesticulate madly to convey what is happening and they look like they are having seizures not acting in any believable fashion.

All that being said, I still think "Le Chevalier des Neiges" is an excellent film that you should see. It's just the sort of cute fantasy picture that Georges Méliès did best...just like in his justifiably famous "Trip to the Moon". It has a lovely sense of humor, nice sets and really looks nice compared to other films of the day. And, like too many of his films, unfortunately, it's all done in a stage with no outdoor sequences (he did, on very rare occasions do this..but rarely).

The story is a complex fantasy story with knights, witches, an adorable (but abused) dragon, the Devil (played, as usual, by Georges Méliès) and more. It seems that the Devil has kidnapped a princess and it's up to the Knight of the Snows to get her...and he's assisted by fairies (or angels...it's hard to tell which) in his quest. And, if you think about it, it's pretty much the plot to Super Mario Brothers (the game, not the craptastic movie).

So what we have here is an innovative film that is also stuck in the past. But the good far outweighs the bad and the tale is quite cute and enjoyable....and includes a grisly execution at the end...where up pops Old Scratch himself to take the malefactor to his fate!!

1912 was the second-to-last year in the lengthy career of Georges Méliès, and by that point it was clear to most that the filmmaker was long past his prime. The trick film magic acts that he had produced for years back in the early 1900s had grown less popular as time went on; by 1908, he was divided into two studios, churning out a series of poor comedies and melodramas with the help of his production assistant Manuel. Interestingly enough, the following year 1909 saw very little new, with very few movies and many of them the ones he did make being trick films, which harkened back to his days prior to attempting comedies, showing a lack of the ability to make something new. 1910 he arguably made no films (Méliès film scholar John Frazer claims there were many, while Wikipedia states otherwise), and 1911 was the year he made a contract with Pathé Frères - the very company that had tried to outdo him in his own art only several years before with directors such as Segundo de Chomòn. Now that Pathé owned Star Film, Méliès was under an even greater strain, which was, quite simply, to show up his rival Ferdinand Zecca, who was formerly the underdog. The final six films of Méliès were produced by Pathé, and sadly, only one of them was a success ("The Conquest of the Pole", due to its giant of the snows).

"The Knight of the Snows" was his second-to-last or very last movie ("The Voyage of the Bourrichon Family" which followed in 1913 is said from certain sources to have been directed by the production assistant Manuel). It is also his final fantasy feature and the last film in which he plays Satan - a character who the filmmaker had been seen to play throughout his entire career, from "The Devil in a Convent" on up. Unfortunately, as with the majority of the six, "Le Chavalier des Neiges" was also a failure in its old-fashioned style of storytelling, from the basic plot and stagy long shots to special effects which pad the movie. Visually, and when compared to the rest of the Méliès fantasies, it is certainly worthwhile, yet behind the times for the period in its filmic technique.

The film is essentially a remake of the filmmaker's own "The Kingdom of Fairies" from 1903, almost a decade earlier. In this case, the story is transposed to a more medieval setting, as a princess is to be married to the titular Knight of the Snows, when another suitor shows up, wanting to fight for her hand. When all else fails, he seeks the aid of the Devil, brought to him by a wizard-like character, who summons demons to kidnap the princess. And, as in the 1903 film, the rightful suitor is now left to rescue the princess with the aid of a good fairy, leading to a typical finale and a punishment for the villain.

Even while the sets are gorgeously realistic and the costumes up to the standards, what results is what was considered an outdated film for that point in history. Ever since D.W. Griffith had developed the use of cutting with closeups, medium closeups, and POVs, the stagy style of long shots was no longer used, and with every scene in the movie being done this exact same way, the film flopped. Méliès was simply no long on top of filmmaking any longer; his time had passed, and he had done his part. Nonetheless, for any enthusiast of the filmmaker, there is lots to like, such as the outstanding dragon prop (previously used in "Baron Munchausen's Dream") and even a kind of remake of a scene from "The Kingdom of Fairies" in which said dragon, Satan and his minions pull the kidnapped princess up into the sky.