Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Georges Méliès Encore (1896-1911)

Contents: Défense d’afficher [Post No Bills] (1896), Le manoir du diable [The Haunted Castle] (1896), Bombardement d’une maison [The Last Cartridges] (1897), Combat naval en Grèce [Sea Fighting in Greece] (1897), Sur les Toits [On the Roof] (1897), L’Omnibus des toqués ou Blancs et Noirs [Off to Bloomingdale Asylum] (1901), L’Oeuf du sorcier [The Prolific Magical Egg] (1902), Éruption volcanique à la Martinique [The Eruption of Mount Pelée] (1902), Les aventures de Robinson Crusoë [The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe] (1902), La flamme merveilleuse [The Mystical Flame] (1903), Les apparitions fugitives [The Fugitive Apparitions] (1904), Le baquet de Mesmer [A Mesmerian Experiment] (1904), Dêtresse et charité [The Christmas Angel] (1904), Le juif errant [The Wandering Jew] (1904), Un peu de feu S.V.P. [Every Man His Own Cigar Lighter] (1904), L’Ile de Calypso [The Mysterious Island] (1905), L'alchimiste Parafaragamus ou la Cornue infernale [The Mysterious Retort] (1906) misidentified as L’Hallucination de l’alchimiste (1897), Les roses magiques [The Magic Roses] (1906), Deux cent milles sous les mers [Under the Seas] (1907), Le dirigeable fantastique [The Inventor Crazybrains and His Wonderful Airship] (1907), Le Mariage de victoire [How Bridget’s Lover Escaped] (1907), Robert Macaire et Bertrand, les roi de Cambrioleurs [Robert Macaire and Bertrand] (1907), Satan en prison (1907), Excursion dans la lune (1908), François ler et Triboulet (1908), Hydrothérapie fantastique (1909), Le papillon fantastique (1909) and Le vitrail diabolique (1911).

Georges Méliès is best known for his inventive and visually-striking short films that helped to establish the new technology of motion pictures as a worldwide entertainment industry. The Méliès comedies and dramas of 1896 and 1897 far outstripped, in imagination and execution, the primitive product of American film producers from those early years.

This collection of Georges Méliès comedy and drama films have been recovered since the release of Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913).

— Carl Bennett

This supplementary DVD collection of films by pioneer filmmaker Georges Méliès presents 26 films that have been recovered since Flicker Alley’s release of the five-disc Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913). Many of these films that have not previously appeared on home video, and have been mastered in high-definition yielding excellent results on DVD. The source prints themselves range from good to excellent, with two films presented in their fragmentary survival state.

Défense d’afficher (1896), a comedy, is presented from a very-good print, which appears to be 35mm, with good contrast and very-good clarity (26 seconds).

Le manoir du diable (1896), a comedy trick film, has been transferred from a good reduction print that may be 9.5mm in gauge. The small-gauge print renders a picture that is detailed enough to clearly see the film’s action (1 minute).

Sur les Toits (1897), a comedy, is mastered from a very-good 35mm print that appears to be 35mm, and may be a tightly cropped (1 minute).

Bombardement d’une maison (1897), a drama, is presented from a good to very-good print that appears to be 35mm. The picture is slightly jumpy and goes in and out of focus, possibly indicating a slightly shrunken source print (1 minute).

Combat naval en Grèce (1897), a drama, has been transferred from a very-good source print that appears to be 35mm, rendering a picture with a broad greyscale range and very-good image details (1 minute).

L’Omnibus des toqués ou Blancs et Noirs (1901), a comedy trick film, is presented from a very-good source print that appears to be 35mm. Some of the print wear is emphasized by the video transfer and/or disc compression, rendering a perhaps rougher picture than could have been presented (1 minute).

L’Oeuf du sorcier (1902), a comedy trick film, is mastered from a 35mm source print that features very-good image detail and a broad range of greytones that are well-rendered in the video transfer (2 minutes).

Éruption volcanique à la Martinique (1902), a faked actuality film, is presented from a source print, with very-good picture details, that appears to be 35mm. Waiting for something to happen is nearly fruitless (1 minute).

Les aventures de Robinson Crusoë (1902), a drama, has been transferred from a fragmentary source print that was duplicated from a hand-tinted color print, but is itself black & white. The very-good print appears to be missing the beginning of the film and a logical ending, and is partially marred with beginning print decomposition (1 minute).

La flamme merveilleuse (1903), a comedy trick film, is presented from a good reduction print, that appears to be 16mm gauge. The source print is soft in its image quality, with closed-up shadow details and some persistent frame jitters (2 minutes).

Un peu de feu S.V.P. (1904), a comedy, has been transferred from a very-good to excellent 35mm print fragment (8 seconds).

Les apparitions fugitives (1904), a magic trick film, is presented from a good to very-good print that appears to be 35mm, and is slightly flat in its greyscale range and of very-good image quality (2 minutes).

Le juif errant (1904), a religious drama presented with descriptive narration in English, has been transferred from a very-good source print, assumed to be 35mm, that was duplicated from a hand-tinted color print, but is itself black & white (3 minutes).

Dêtresse et charité (1904), a drama with descriptive narration in English, is presented from a very-good soure print that appears to be 35mm, rendering a reasonably clear picture that is a little detailless in its highlights and plugged up in its few deep shadows (10 minutes).

Le baquet de Mesmer (1904), a magic trick film, has been transferred from a color source print, that appears to be 35mm, with reasonable image clarity and with some moderate print damage and beginning decomposition. The print appears originally to have been processed in sepia colortones, with hand color-tinting in blue, yellow, red and orange (3 minutes).

L’ile de Calypso (1905), a drama presented with descriptive narration in English, is presented from a very-good to excellent print that appears to be 35mm and is relatively free of print flaws. The image is reasonably stable, though a bit soft in image detail and a little flat in its greyscale range, rendering an overall pleasant viewing experience (4 minutes).

L'alchimiste Parafaragamus ou la Cornue infernale (1906) [misidentified as L’Hallucination de l’alchimiste (1897)], a comedy trick film, is presented from a very-good 35mm color-tinted print that has been well excuted and renders a clear picture. Fantastic and astounding for an 1897 film (2 minutes).

Le dirigeable fantastique (1907), a comedy, is presented from a very-good to excellent color-tinted print, that appears to be 35mm, with very-good image detail and a broad range of greytones (2 minutes).

Robert Macaire et Bertrand, les roi de Cambrioleurs (1907), a comedy with descriptive narration in English, has been transferred from a very-good to excellent print that appears to be 35mm gauge. The print features a broad range of greytones, very-good image detail, and moderate amount of print flaws. The film includes a Méliès rarity — exterior location footage (11 minutes).

Deux cent milles sous les mers (1907), a drama presented with descriptive narration in English, is presented from a poor reduction print that appears be 16mm (and to have been duplicated multiple times), which is contrasty, flat and grey with nearly featureless highlights and plugged-up shadows. Very hard to watch, this presentation has been prepared from what may be the sole surviving print of this film (10 minutes).

Le mariage de victoire (1907), a comedy, has been transferred from a very-good to excellent American release print (that appears to be 35mm), which is finely-detailed and features a balanced range of greytones, although missing highlight details in some shots. The film features a couple of Méliès rarities — exterior location footage and a medium close-up shot (8 minutes).

All of the source prints have been transferred full-frame at a natural speed. The films are accompanied by music scores by Antonio Coppola, Joe Rinaudo, Eric Beheim and Aidge Tafial. There is a pleasing variety in the musical approaches and the instrumentation of the accompanying music to keep the entire program entertaining.

As supplemental material, the collection also contains two short films by Segundo de Chomon made in the Méliès fashion which have on occasion been misidentified as Méliès films.

Owners of the original 5-disc boxset Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913) will want to add this supplemental disc to their home video collection. Unfortunately, the disc is now out-of-print.

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This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Other FRENCH FILMS of the silent era available on home video.