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Memorable, crazy movie

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Melies introduces us to a magician who performs various tricks where things appear and reappear. He stands before a table which at times acts like a chest, allowing him to leap into it and turn into a clown. There is little new here because Melies has done this kind of thing several times in other short films. Still, the creativity is there and he makes us pay attention.

With the term "director" still truly uncommon as the description of a profession for movie makers, you could certainly say that Georges Méliès was a professional magician as well. Many of his works put him in that corner much more than the likes of Lumière, Guy or Dickson, so this short film is the perfect description of a work directed by Méliès. Unfortunately the outcome isn't as magical as some of his other works. The only part I really liked was when the clown is about to eat and the table disappears. The rest is terribly incongruent, difficult to understand and occasionally even pointless. It's the most possible amount of action packed into one minute and it clearly hurt the substance (or lack thereof) in this short film. Not recommended.

There are a couple novel tricks in this one-minute, one-scene attraction from early cinema pioneer Georges Méliès. "The Magician" is one of the filmmaker's earliest surviving trick films, and it displays many features common throughout his oeuvre. There are appearances, disappearances and transformations of characters and objects, accomplished via editing, which Méliès had been doing in his films since at least "The Vanishing Lady" (Escamotage d'une dame au théâtre Robert Houdin)(1896) (his earliest available trick film). Once again, Méliès also plays the magician in front of the camera, as well as behind it. One of the seeming novelties of "The Magician" is that some of the tricks, or cuts, occur during action—when the characters are moving about or are in a mid-air leap. The magic is created from almost truly invisible editing—cutting on action without any change in camera setup or angle.The second novelty here is a double exposure. According to historians, Méliès had previously used this technique in "Le cabinet de Méphistophélès" (1897), which is now a lost film. Currently, "The Magician" appears to be the earliest surviving instance of his use of the attraction. In this film, he uses it to show a woman's dismembered head atop a statue stand. The black background gives the trick away and can be seen in many other films where the director employs multiple-exposure photography. The actress would also have been covered in black below her head, so that her body wouldn't register on film. His "The Four Troublesome Heads" (Un home de tête)(1898) took multiple-exposures and disembodied heads further—fivefold, to be precise. Additionally, it seems the most exposures Méliès achieved were seven, such as in "The One-Man Band" (L'homme orchestre)(1900).

Magician, The (1898) *** (out of 4) aka Le Magicien The magic of Melies is on full display here as he plays the title character and we see various magic tricks including a great one of a man jumping into a closed box and then someone else reappearing. If you like your Melies films with magic then this is just the one for you as we get non-stop magic tricks throughout the short running time. There are various sequences with Melies trying to grab for a woman only to have her disappear and then reappear in a different area. There's also a clown on hand who has several tricks pulled on him including some disappearing food. The special effects are very good throughout making this one of the director's better films.