Otherwise known as Georges Méliès, he was born in Paris to a family of shoe manufacturers, though a young Méliès had no interest in following their work. When his father retired from the family business and the factory was turned over to Méliès and his two elder brothers, he gladly sold his shares to them.
This financial windfall helped his acquisition of the Théatre Robert-Houdin, where for several years he performed and invented illusory tricks, inspired by the Penn and Teller of their times, illusionists Maskelyne and Cooke.
Méliès was later invited to the Lumieré brothers display of their cinematograph. Beyond that day - the 28th of December, 1895 - he became fascinated with film and never looked back.
The Films of Georges Méliès
In 1896, Méliès made his first film and over the next 17 years would make over 500 more (with some sources crediting him with upward of 1,000 films).
In that first year, Méliès discovered the stop-trick when his camera jammed while filming traffic, noting how an object captured in the same place as a previous one could create the illusion of transmuting, or substituting, the former. Méliès continued to pioneer special effects, using his background in stage magic to great effect. He used the stop-trick in most of his early films, notably in The Vanishing Lady of 1897.
He was also amongst the first to use multiple exposures and superimpositions (first used in his La Caverne Maudite - The Cave of the Demons - in 1898). He took this further with L’Homme de Têtes (The Troublesome Heads) in 1898, using multiple superimpositions to remove his own re-sprouting head while placing them on tables beside him.
By 1899, The Conjuror, Évocation Spirite, and La Pyramide de Triboulet, to name a few, show his growing confidence with the medium.
One of his most influential works was a telling of Cinderella, also filmed in 1899, where he took the radical step of using multiple scenes to tell the story. Cinderella was a 7-minute, 20-scene, epic and film-makers everywhere adopted the approach in order to compete with his innovations.
His most famous film, however, was 1902’s Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) – somewhat based on the Jules Verne story.
This not only gave us the iconic image of the rocket-ship that has crashed into the foamy face of the moon, but marks Méliès as the progenitor of the science-fiction film. It used elaborate sets and costumes, a large cast of wizardly scientists and tribalistic moon-people, technical dissolves and fades. It is a masterpiece of it’s day and better displays Méliès’ inestimable contribution to cinematic history than any other of his films.
The Future History of Georges Méliès
Other notable, horror-themed, features from Méliès included the hand-coloured Infernal Cauldron and The Monster, both made in 1903, with the latter showing how nimbly he could perform a transition from fake objects to live ones, and vice versa. Before that, in 1901, he made the first film to portray the infamous murderer Bluebeard, simply entitled Barbe Bleu.
However, as time went on the Frenchman’s strengths became his weaknesses as contemporaries adapted to his success, developing equivalent techniques of their own. Méliès did not adapt - did not strive to be anything other than a magician who made films.
From 1905 onward he fell behind what was once the chasing pack and his popularity waned. By 1913 his film company was bankrupt and bought by the highly successful Pathé company. The final indignity for Méliès came with the onset of the first World War, when most of his film stock was apparently melted down to use as boot heels.
He would be honoured for his contributions later in life and died on January 21, 1938.
Return to The House of the Devil
The Missing Link website has a detailed account of the life of Georges Méliès and his films. It also cites the first horror film not as The House of the Devil, but one made previously in the same year by Méliès, Une Nuit Terrible – One Terrible Night.
This features an attack of giant beetles and is hailed as a precursor to the 1950’s style of creature-features. Returning briefly to that subject, the same source cites The House of the Devil as being perhaps the first vampire-themed horror and is not alone in that assertion.
It will be a matter of opinion as to whether or not giant insects constitute horror or fantasy with a horrific tint. As with The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, there’s an argument to be made, but any lingering doubts cannot deny the place of The House of the Devil as possessing horror elements that leave no room for debate.
As for the latter being the first vampire-themed horror, it’s surely a case of mistaken identity. The fact that the Devil manifests from the form of a bat and is banished by a crucifix is not evidence of vampires. The bat was an obvious choice of creature and the crucifix, well... let’s just say that the Devil has a history in christianity, which pre-dates vampirism by quite some time.
In fact, vampirism is certainly a derivative concept from medieval beliefs in lycanthropy, which was itself at that time equated to witchcraft, devilry and returning from the dead.
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Looking beyond these murky beginnings, with the developments brought on through Méliès’ astonishing work and the ever-evolving world of cinema around him, the Horror genre in film had been born and taken it’s first shaky steps.
Now it was time to grow under the inspiration of other generations. And grow it did.
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