Le scarabée d'or

This is another trick photography in the style of Georges Melies - although this time made by Ferdinand Zecca for Pathe. Most imitations of Melies were blatant copies with little attempt at individuality on the part of those doing the copying, but Zecca was a talented filmmaker in his own right and this fantasy stands up to comparison with most of Melies' work.

The story, such as it is, is a little confusing, but it's not the story that's important - it's the special effects and the use of stencil-coloured film. the colour effects are quite spectacular and help to set this apart from more run of the mill efforts.

One of those early silent shorts that gets in and gets out very quickly, in under 3 minutes, and involves a great amount of magic, and the composition is all in one long shot (which is part of the magic part since it involves dissolves and a lot of super-impositions and other early goodies of the cinematic trade). In this case some dude is skulking around, a beetle is crawling on the wall, and then the beetle turns into a woman! Holy Beatles, Batman! It's mostly about showing off color - yes, this is one of the early examples of using color in a silent film, albeit it's scattered - but most notably is the ending, which is actually rather messed up. I know that's not a very articulate way of describing it, but when you watch what happens with this Skulking Man who may or may not have somehow offended this Beetle Woman (who also returns with two, uh, female assistants), you'll likely do as I do and yell out "WHOA!" at what happens to this guy. Not a lot really *happens* in this short, but what does counts.

This is one of the most unusual early films I've seen. But the color kept my interest in this. I expected it to be more than just a single scene, since Pathe had just come off producing the monumental feature- film "Le Vie et la Passion de Jesus-Christ" (1905). But I was satisfied with how it turned out, because "Life and Passion" was still probably being paid off. See it for it's artsy nature and it's somewhat surrealist nature. One thing I'd like to know though is how the heck they accomplished those special effects. Especially when the beetle is floating around in some egg-shaped sphere around her oppressor, the sorcerer.

Weird, creative, and colorful, the visuals in "The Golden Beetle" are as spectacular as anything made in the early years of cinema. This had to have taken both a lot of skill and a lot of work to plan and execute. It uses several forms of trick photography, and also has lavish color produced by the old laborious process of hand-tinting each frame. The results are worth it, and it's still entertaining to watch over 90 years later. Much of the time, the succession of strange images is almost seamless, and there is not a dull moment. The actual story, though simple, is also rather amusing in itself.

In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Georges Méliès made a great name for himself with his many wonderful films. Méliès had been a stage magician and decided to go into film making. At first, many of his films consisted of him standing on stage performing tricks that were mostly done by stopping the camera and then restarting it--making things seem like they are appearing and disappearing. By today's standards, it's pretty obvious what is happening, but in his day, this was great stuff. So great, in fact, that many (including Edison and some other French film makers) blatantly copied the Méliès films. While I can't recall another Méliès film exactly like this one, many were copied practically scene for scene and "creative borrowing" was rampant in this day and age.

As I stated above, this does not appear to be a direct copy but is instead strongly inspired by the films of Georges Méliès. Like this master s work, this film shows a many on stage doing some conjuring--though this time he's dressed like an Arab. Méliès occasionally dressed this way, too, though in most of his films in this style he's wearing a tux like a stage magician. And, like Méliès, things begin to appear and disappear by using the same techniques. However, there's more to this one than most copies of the Méliès style, as the magician crawls around stage in a very peculiar way (I'm still at a loss as to why he does this). Additionally, the film uses wonderfully hand-painted cells to make it look like a color film. Georges Méliès also occasionally did this, but with THE GOLDEN BEETLE, the paint job was terrific--even better than the Méliès hand-painted films. Seeing the weird looking lady dressed as a beetle was impressive as she appeared silver and gold.

Now as for exactly what happens in the film, I am at a bit of a loss. It looks almost as if the film makers were on LSD, as it gets pretty weird and confusing. Still, I liked the colorful beetle-lady and it was fun to watch so I'm giving it a 7. Had it been more original, the score would have no doubt been much higher.