Un Homme de têtes

Early French filmmaker Georges Méliès is universally known as a pioneering cinematic visionary, courtesy of the phenomenal success of his most famous film, 'Le Voyage dans la lune / A Trip to the Moon (1902).' However, the director's undeniable genius is also apparent in many of his earlier, lesser-known shorts, most running less than one minute in length. Throughout the 1890's, most filmmakers had only exploited the cinematic medium for experimental or documentary purposes, capturing images of everyday objects or situations. Méliès, a magician by trade, saw things much differently. He imagined cinema being used to translate the impossible onto screen, to surprise and baffle the audience, to transport them into a world unlike their own. His 'Un homme de têtes / The Four Troublesome Heads' of 1898 is an absolute gem, and an incredible exhibition of how far Méliès was ahead of his time in terms of visual effects.

The film begins when a magician (as always, played by Méliès himself) appears on stage and, remarkably, removes his own head. When he places the singing head onto the table, a new one suddenly appears on the his shoulders, and the magician and the head interact with each other, with the former scrambling beneath the table to prove to the audience that he is not playing a cheap magical trick on them. The magician repeats this stunning feat twice more, until there are three enthusiastically singing Méliès heads sitting on the table, and the intact magician entertains them with his banjo.

Probably the first use of split-screen in cinema history, the visual effects in 'Un homme de têtes' are nothing short of remarkable. The countless uses of split screen, dissolves and double exposures blend seamlessly into the finished product, convincingly passing itself off as having been filmed in a single take. The director's extraordinary on screen charisma is once again on show for all to see, and you can certainly tell that he was formerly a magician; his vibrant enthusiasm for the performance is almost infectious. There's also the sheer casualness with which Méliès removes his own head, as if it's nothing at all to him. Despite already knowing that an exceptional amount of work must have gone into producing the film, somehow it is all made to seem so easy… almost like magic.

Okay, this is NOT a great film compared to later films--even the later films of this film's creator, Méliès (who created many, many magical films such as Le Voyage Dans le Lune). But, and this is the important part, for 1898, the film is without peer for its brilliant use of camera tricks. Like ALL other films of the era, this is a short film--lasting between one and two minutes (depending on the frame rate at which it is played), but in all other respects it is different. Showing his love for the absurd and fantastic, Méliès features a performer who pulls off his head and places it on a table--where it sings away. Then, a new head re-appears and he does it again until there are four heads in total!! It is amazing for its time and not to be missed by film historians.

If you want to see this film online, go to Google and type in "Méliès" and then click the video button for a long list of his films that are viewable without special software.

Four Troublesome Heads, The (1898)

*** (out of 4)

aka Un Homme de tete

Classic Meiles film has him playing a magician who removes his head three different times and lays them on a table where they naturally act up. This is perhaps one of the director's most popular films and it's easy to see why as the effects are pretty good and the film is just fun throughout. The highlight is without a doubt the scene where Melies removes him head and then throws it up into the air where it eventually falls back into place. I think the distraction of the heads could have been done better and with more imagination but overall this is another delightful film from the magical Melies.

"The Four Troublesome Heads" is one of the earliest surviving films by Georges Méliès to employ the multiple exposure technique, or superimposition effect. He used the technique earlier in "The Cabinet of Mephistopheles" (Le Cebinet de Méphistophélès)(1897), but it appears to be lost. (There's also a brief superimposition in "The Magician" (Le magicien)(1898), for a head on a stand.) It's uncertain whether Méliès or George Albert Smith introduced the trick to cinema, although what seems to be the earliest relevant film that I know of is the aforementioned film by Méliès. Smith tried to patent "the invention of double exposure applied to animated photography", but that was frivolous since the technique was already in use in still photography. Somewhere from around July to October 1898, Smith made at least six films that employed the trick. In "The Corsican Brothers", "Photographing a Ghost" and "The Mesmerist, or Body and Soul", Smith used multiple exposures to make transparent ghosts. He also used the technique, coupled with a masked camera lens, to create a scene-within-a-scene vision in "The Corscican Brothers", "Cinderella", "Faust and Mephistopheles" and "Santa Claus". In regards to masking the camera, Smith, indeed, seems to have introduced it to motion pictures. Méliès would later use masking for his multiple-exposure trick films, such as "A Mysterious Portrait" (Le Portrait Mystérieux) (1899) and "The One-Man Band" (L' Homme orchestre) (1900). Nevertheless, the uncertainty is somewhat moot given that Méliès and Smith are known to have had discussions around the time of these inventions, and both filmmakers were leaders in exploring the possibilities of motion pictures.

The superimpositions of "The Four Troublesome Heads" are not for ghosts, but, rather, are for four cloned heads of same texture; this effect of same texture is achieved with the black background. In this film, Méliès accomplished the headless and no body effects by masking himself with black clothing. Additionally, a dummy head was used while the Méliès with a body moved the heads to the table. For these transitions, Méliès employed his second essential trick of stop-substitutions (a.k.a. substitution splicing). The camera operator stopped the camera – the scene was rearranged – and filming resumed. They are essentially jump cuts touched up by post-production splicing. Méliès had already used the stop-substitution trick in such films as "The Vanishing Lady" (Escamotage d'une dame au théâtre Robert Houdin) (1896), and it would continue to be probably his most used trick during his film-making career.

Yet, these tricks are only of a technical and filmic history interest without Méliès's unique showmanship and enthusiasm, which was largely responsible for the immense popularity of his films in his own day and the preference of today's audiences for the films of Méliès over those by other early filmmakers. Méliès was, indeed, more cultured and absorbed with theatrical traditions than were his contemporaries. Later, filmmakers would surpass much of his theatrical style, but at the time of this film, he was leading the way with it.

This early Georges Méliès fantasy feature is outstanding for 1898, both in its convincing special visual effects and in its witty good humor, and it's still lots of fun to watch today. There are quite a few lesser-known gems among Méliès's many fantasy features, and this is one of the best ones.

The setup is simple, but Méliès uses it with great skill and imagination. Méliès himself appears on screen, and does tricks with his own head. As elementary as the camera tricks are, Méliès was already expert at using them, and as a result most of the illusions are seamless and very enjoyable. There is also a good deal of humor in the ways that Méliès interacts with all of the "Troublesome Heads".

Any film that still survives from the 1890s is usually worth seeing for its historical value, and most of them also provide some kind of interesting information on the techniques or subject matter of the earliest movies. But this is one feature whose value goes well beyond the historical. It's enjoyable in itself, and it is also one of the earliest examples of the genius of one of cinema's most extraordinary pioneers.