Le voyage de Gulliver à Lilliput et chez les géants

Georges Melies' adaptation of Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" is most distinguished, today, for being a color film of the classic story. Color was rare in 1902 (and many years after) as non-tinted color has to be hand painted on the film; this was an arduous task. Also notable is the film's short running time of approximately five minutes. Much of the original work is not covered, but viewers were expected to be familiar with the story, and enjoy the filmed highlights. There are a couple of scenes missing; according to contemporary reports, Gulliver's shipwreck was certainly included. You can do a lot in a few minutes, as Mr. Melies includes a re-make of his own "Une partie de cartes" (1896), which already looked like something previously covered by the Lumiere Brothers.

***** Gulliver's Travels (1902) Georges Melies ~ Georges Melies

This short movie, is a great technical masterpiece by a legendary master of Cinema. The film is loosely based on Jonathan Swift's classic (as only mentions Gulliver's first encounters with Lilliputians and the Giants), nor has any thematic statements about the original story; but is an excellent example of Georges Méliès' magnificent technical abilities, which are amazing for us in the 21st century as much as for people in 120 years ago. Méliès is an eternal master of Cinema.

This version of "Gulliver's Travels" by Georges Méliès lasts only four minutes long...which isn't unusual for 1902. However, Jonathan Swift's novel is quite long and the only way to make it in four minutes is to pretty much skip all the plot! So, there's no context or explanation for anything! It's a shame, as technically it's a lovely film for its day...but only showing a few disparate pieces of the book really does the story a huge disservice.

Worth seeing if you are a huge Georges Méliès fan, otherwise he's simply done much better films that I suggest you try first.

This brief and charming fantasy was produced by Georges Méliès, master of the trick film. It was completed not long after his epochal "Le voyage dans la lune," the cinema's premiere science-fiction adventure, which was based on a story by Jules Verne. This version of Jonathan Swift's famous tale is considerably shorter and simpler than the Verne adaptation, and features only a few key moments from the first two sections of Swift's novel, but the scenic and photographic effects are impressive, and demonstrate what this director could achieve when he was at the top of his game. And happily, a hand-colored print survives that looks like a brightly illustrated edition of the book come to life.

It's likely that the film originally began with a shipwreck sequence, but as it stands today the surviving footage begins abruptly with the image of a giant Gulliver striding through Lilliput, stepping over rooftops. This Gulliver is an old man with a white beard and a hooked nose, a comical old fellow who mugs and gesticulates vigorously throughout. (I believe he's played by Méliès himself, but I'm not sure about that.) Next, he's trussed up and sleeping as the small but angry citizens of Lilliput gather on a bridge above him with spears and pitchforks, and prod him aggressively. Soon afterward, however, the giant guest receives friendlier treatment: Gulliver sits at an enormous dinner table as a team of tiny chefs serve him food. A royal procession arrives, but the pageantry is interrupted when a fire breaks out in the castle, causing a panic. This Gulliver, being more fastidious than Swift's, puts out the flames with a spray of seltzer water.

And then suddenly we're in Brobdingnag, the land of the giants. This world is represented in a sequence apparently set in a palace. We see a tight medium shot of three individuals (highly unusual in Méliès' surviving work), two nobles and a midget who is probably a court jester. The nobles play cards while the jester chatters away, but the trio are interrupted when a lady arrives and excitedly deposits a small bundle on the table: it's Gulliver of course, shocked at the size of the giants who surround him. Everyone gestures vigorously. In the final shot Gulliver is alone with the lady and tries to speak to her, but she indicates she can't hear him. He attempts to climb a ladder to address her but falls backward into a huge teacup!

Needless to say, this very short film provides only a quick montage of amusing moments, not a story which can stand on its own for anyone unfamiliar with Swift, but it's strikingly well made for its time and still funny. Here is a fine sample of imaginative special effects work by a legendary film-making pioneer, at the height of his creative powers.

By "The Man with the Rubber Head" (L'homme à la tête en caoutchouc)(1901), Georges Méliès had figured out that he could use multiple exposures (superimpositions) of the negative to create an image that was smaller or larger than another image. Méliès was the most clever of early filmmakers, and he specialized in exploiting cinematic tricks, mostly for single-scene trick attractions, but also in adaptations of classic fairy tales and fantasy voyage stories, so it was only a matter of time after he discovered the aforementioned effect that he would adapt Swift's novel involving the tiny people of Lilliput and the giants of Brobdingnag.

Of course, five scenes in about four minutes can hardly render any novel very well. The film only provides visual cues, or selected moments from the book, to the spectator, who then need to have knowledge of the source or, back then, have the film explained to them by a lecturer. Similar non self-contained early film literary selections included "Scrooge; or, Marley's Ghost" (1901), "Alice in Wonderland" (1903), "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1903), and earlier story films by Méliès, such as "Cinderella" (Cendrillon)(1899). It seems Méliès wasn't even concerned with adapting the story (which he really didn't do), but in using the popular source as a container for his scaled multiple-exposure tricks.

In the film's first scene, a miniature set is used to create the scale that Gulliver has come upon a race of very small people. Throughout the rest of the film, multiple-exposure photography manipulates scale. The effect is rather shaky when the two images share a similar amount of space in the frame, as in scenes two and three. Also of interest is that a hand-colored print of this film is available today, which includes some especially good skin coloring. Additionally, scenes are transitioned by dissolves, which is a technique Méliès began using in "Cinderella" and which other filmmakers adopted as well.