"When producers make all of the decisions in cinema than money rules and the magic is lost. More independent film makers should be supported. The innovators who care about feeding the imagination should be encouraged, the art and the magic should be sought after more than the money... or originality will be lost, and everything will eventually be counterfeit."
Consul Nicholas Moore
"What makes the movie so magical is the big truths in the story. The film explicates in the very feeling you have when watching, how we are losing the magic in cinema. Children have less mystery in life these days, and CGI is making everything seem explainable and counterfeit."
Georges Méliès was a prolific innovator in the use of special effects, accidentally discovered the substitution stop trick in 1896, and was one of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color in his work. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality through cinematography, Méliès is sometimes referred to as the first "Cinemagician". Two of his most well-known films are A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904). Both stories involve strange, surreal voyages, somewhat in the style of Jules Verne, and are considered among the most important early science fiction films, though their approach is closer to fantasy. Méliès was also an early pioneer of horror cinema, which can be traced back to his Le Manoir du diable (1896). (Wikipedia)
Georges (the famous film maker) appears and explains how he came to make movies, invented the special effects, and how he lost faith in films when World War I began, being forced to sell his films to get money, and opening the toy shop to survive. He also believes the automaton he created was lost in the museum fire and nothing remains of his life's work...
"At one time the artists, the film makers did what they did for the beauty of it, the magic they created. When money becomes the driving force something very special is lost... you can feel the loss, as if the spirit of cinema is not there."
Consul Nicholas Moore
The History
The overall backstory and primary features of Georges Méliès' life as depicted in the film are largely accurate: he did become interested in film after seeing a demonstration of the Lumière brothers' camera, he was a magician and toymaker, he experimented with automata, he did own a theatre (Theatre Robert-Houdin), he was forced into bankruptcy, his film stock was reportedly melted down for its cellulose, he became a toy salesman at the Montparnasse station, and he was eventually awarded the Légion d'honneur medal after a period of terrible neglect. Many of the early silent films shown in the movie are Méliès's actual works, such as Le voyage dans la lune (1902). However, the film does not mention Méliès' two children, his brother Gaston (who worked with Méliès during his film making career), or his first wife Eugènie, who was married to Méliès during the time he made films (Eugènie died in 1913). The film shows Méliès as having been married to Jeanne d'Alcy during their film making period, when in reality they did not marry until 1925. (Wikipedia)
The automaton was inspired by one made by the Swiss watchmaker Henri Maillardet, which Selznick had seen in the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia,[36] as well as the Jaquet-Droz automaton "the writer".
Emil Lager, Ben Addis, and Robert Gill make cameo appearances as Django Reinhardt, the father of Gypsy jazz guitar, Salvador Dalí, the Spanish surrealist painter, and James Joyce, the Irish writer, respectively. The names of all three characters appear towards the end of the film's cast credit list.
The book that Monsieur Labisse gives Hugo as a gift, Robin Hood le proscrit, was written by Alexandre Dumas in 1864 as a French translation of a 1838 work by Pierce Egan the Younger in England. The book is symbolic, as Hugo must avoid the "righteous" law enforcement (represented by Inspector Gustave) to live in the station and later to restore the automaton both to a functioning status and to its rightful owner.
The Jaquet-Droz automata, among all the numerous automata built by the Jaquet-Droz family, refer to three doll automata built between 1768 and 1774 by Pierre Jaquet-Droz, his son Henri-Louis and Jean-Frédéric Leschot: the musician, the draughtsman and the writer. The dolls are still functional, and can be seen at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire of Neuchâtel, in Switzerland. They are considered to be among the remote ancestors of modern computers.
The automata were designed and built by Pierre Jaquet-Droz, Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz and Jean-Frédéric Leschot as advertisement and entertainment toys designed to improve the sales of watches among the nobility of Europe in the 18th century. They were carried around, and lost at several points. The History and Archeology society of Neuchâtel eventually bought them in 1906, for 75,000 francs in gold, and gave them to the museum, where they have been ever since.
The writer is the most complex of the three automata. Using a system similar to the one used for the draughtsman for each letter, he is able to write any custom text up to 40 letters long (the text is rarely changed; one of the latest instances was in honour of president François Mitterrand when he toured the city). The text is coded on a wheel where characters are selected one by one. He uses a goose feather to write, which he inks from time to time, including a shake of the wrist to prevent ink from spilling. His eyes follow the text being written, and the head moves when he takes some ink. This sort of complexity is lacking today, as CGI takes away much of the mystery and inovation.
"When producers make all of the decisions in cinema then money rules and the magic is lost. More independent film makers should be supported. The innovators who care about feeding the imagination should be encouraged, the art and the magic should be sought after more than the money... or originality will be lost, and everything will eventually be counterfeit."
Consul Nicholas Moore
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