We begin with a wizard.

A lone man upon a stage, energetically charismatic, even manic, the wizard has learned to paint miracles with light, to make devils vanish and beautiful maidens appear. His magic lantern phantasms come to life.

Near the dawn of the moving picture, George Melies, a stage magician at the Theatre Robert-Houdin in Paris, discovered that there was magic in film beyond the simple magic of capturing motion. Between 1896 and 1914, Melies made hundreds of little movies, many of them fantastic in their subject matter. Melies discovered or developed virtually all of the basic special effects that could be accomplished with a movie camera – stop motion, multiple exposures, forced perspective, and many other tricks that would be used in films for decades to come.

With his background in magic, his sets are filled with the trappings of theatrical wonder – demons, gigantic grinning heads, witches, and richly appointed alchemists’ laboratories. Melies uses these images more to amuse than to frighten and the sprightly elements of his little vignettes echo the comic relief that horror films still use today to lighten otherwise unbearably grim stories. Although none of Melies’ work is overtly erotic, he was very fond of adding shapely Parisian ladies to his movies and a few of his more developed stories have romantic elements.

So much early film has been lost forever that there were almost certainly other works of dark fantasy from this era that we will never see again, but Melies was the undisputed master and built the foundation for everything to follow – magic to illusion to film, with the devil never far away.

Drake’s Pick – 1896-1910

Georges Melies: First Wizard of Cinema, is a recent 5-DVD set of the wizard’s surviving work. Stunningly presented, including many beautiful examples of hand-tinted color that Melies used to add glamour to his vision. The set includes over 170 films and fragments.

Viewed as a whole, the collection is almost overwhelming, but there are breathtaking moments that stand out. The Devil in a Convent is a manic take on a classic theme, virtue and vice in a frenetic ballet.  Another highlight is the Conquest of the Pole, an early “monster” film with a horrible snowman menacing a party of Arctic explorers (who are also racing against a team of suffragettes to be first at the pole).

The common element in the best of Melies' films is the sense that perception is a fragile thing, that illusions and hallucinations are perhaps the natural state of existence, and that nothing is ever as it appears.