The Living Playing Cards

Georges Melies appears as a magician to do some card tricks. These however are not you typical card tricks. Melies makes the cards bigger and then they appear on the big white sheet of paper behind him. But then even more crazy magic appears. The playing cards come to life. First the queen and then the king. Then Melies reveals to the audience that he somehow duplicated himself and reveals the king to be another Melies. Then when the show is done, Melies wraps everything up and leaves. It's entertaining, as it holds you're interest for the 3 minutes that it is. As is usually the case with Melies films the special effects are good, so yeah. Go see it if you're a Melies fan.

One thing that always comes over in a George Melies film is the man's energy and heightened sense of fun. He must have been exhausting to work with. Here he adopts the persona of stage magician - which is exactly what he used to be in the years before film - to perform card tricks. These are no ordinary playing cards, however, because he increases their size ten-fold so that the audience can see their face value.

The film is a series of trick shots, which makes the stage element redundant really, and in less talented hands these might quickly grow dull. But Melies certainly knew how to entertain his audience, and throws in a couple of clever surprises to round things off. This is one of Melies' less extravagant films, but it's still great fun to watch.

"The Living Playing Cards" (_Les Cartes vivantes_) is what cinema is all about -- *magic!* Méliès himself plays The Magician, and he is truly amazing as he performs card tricks on stage, acting well as he asks the audience if a card he has drawn is "our" card, then reacts with disappointment as he realizes it is not, but then recovering with aplomb as he attempts to make up for his error by outdoing himself with each new card trick, culminating in his not just making a life-sized card come to life, but finally ... well, that would be telling!

Méliès once wrote that a film director must be prepared to work not only as the director, but as the writer, the camera operator, and an actor as well, if necessary. He was all of those things and did them all extremely well. Now if only I could figure out how he pulled off that last card trick....

Melies does some excellent work here. First of all, his work with the magical cards is nice. The quality of the film makes us see the great one and his presence so much better than the past. He doe multiple tricks with cards turning into people and vice-versa. I really like his finale when he, himself, goes through the big card and appears in another place. But there is even more.

Living Playing Cards, The (1905)

*** (out of 4)

aka Les Cartes vivantes

Extremely entertaining and fun film from the French master has him playing (what else) a magician who puts a plane piece of paper on a stool and magically turns it into cards. He then takes the trick even further by having the Queen and King walk off the paper. This here is certainly one of the director's most known films as the tricks are pure magic even though it's obvious to see how they're done. What makes this film work so well is the fact that Melies, the actor, really is charming and sells everything we're seeing. He has that certain grace about him that draws you to whatever he's doing and whoever is playing the King is also a real hoot. The final trick in the film is priceless and makes this one of the more memorable films from the director.