L'Homme orchestre
1900 Comedy / Fantasy
|
|
|
Summary
A musician arrives on a stage on which there are seven chairs in a row. He sits
on each chair in turn and as he does so he leaves an identical copy of himself.
Once the seven chairs are filled, the seven clones start to play a tune. The six
copies then vanish, leaving the original musician to perform a conjuring trick with the
seven chairs before taking his bow.
Review
In this early work from the man credited as the father of cinema, Georges Méliès
shows how far he came to perfecting the technique of multiple exposure. To create
the illusion of seven copies of the same man playing in a band, the film was exposed seven
times - an extraordinary technical feat requiring meticulous preparation and painstaking
precision. Like most of Méliès work, the pleasure of watching this
film has just as much to do with Méliès’ manic performance as with the artistic
design and accomplished special effects.
© James Travers 2003 Write a review for this film... |
|
