Escamotage d'une dame au théâtre Robert Houdin

Vanishing Lady, The (1896)

*** (out of 4)

aka Escamotage de'une dame chez Robert-Houdin

A magician (played by Melies) brings a woman out on stage and makes her disappear and then he puts a skeleton in a chair and turns it back into the woman. This is a pretty entertaining little film, which shows various things that the director would go onto work with in the future. Of course, the magic scene has always been a big part of the director's career and the trick done here is very nice, although it's easy to spot the edit. The use of a skeleton would also be used countless times by the director in future films. The trick lasts just over a minute and will certainly keep a smile on your face.

Méliès' "Escamotage d'une dame au théâtre Robert Houdin" (1896) or "The Vanishing Lady" is an early example of trick cinematography, utilizing his renowned and often-used technique of stopping the camera mid-scene and altering the mise en scène. As such, it's highly entertaining, although if you delve deeper into Méliès' films you'll soon become very familiar with this technique and its possible variations.

I hope you read the IMDb comment "Magic and Presentation" (January 27th, 2008) by Cineanalyst, where the history behind the French title is well explained. Knowing the historical background isn't mere trivia here but might actually help you appreciate the film more.

Films are a magic show, and it's good to revisit these older films that explicitly remind us lest we forget.

"Escamotage d'une dame au théâtre Robert Houdin" is a very short and simple film. Folks today might no doubt think little of it. But back in 1896, folks were wowed by the film and it spurred actor/director Georges Méliès to make more films like it as well as expand on the tricks he used in this one.

Méliès was a magician before he became a filmmaker. It's obvious in this one as he plays a magician in the film and makes his assistant disappear and then turn into a skeleton. It's all done simply by stopping the camera and restarting it...but the use of edits like this baffled folks in the day and the film deserves kudos for its innovation.

Robert Houdin was a French magician and illusionist. He doesn't appear in this early experiment, but his name is loaned to one of the first illusions on film provided by Georges Melies. Melies himself said that this was the first film in which he used stop motion - a process in which illusions could be performed by stopping his camera, rearranging the set, and then starting the camera again, to give the illusion that items and people have either appeared or disappeared.

In this film, an elegantly dressed woman sits in a chair while the magician drapes her with a shroud. The magician removes the shroud and the woman has disappeared. He makes a few gestures and voila! He returns - a skeleton??? Oh the horror!. So he brings the shroud back into the act, covers the skeleton, and the entire woman and her clothes are recovered. Wherever the woman went, the clothes MUST follow! After all this is literally the Victorian era even though it is France.

The magician was played by Georges Melies himself, and the woman was played by Jehanne d'Alcy. D'alcy appeared in numerous Melies films over the years, having left the theater to devote herself to film acting, one of the first actors to do this. The two got married, but oddly not until 1925 when D'Alcy was 60 and Melies was 64. They were married until his death in 1938.

"The Vanishing Lady" seems to be the earliest surviving trick film by Georges Méliès (a time-sensitive claim, to be sure). His first films were standard actuality films like those made by the Lumière brothers. One of his earliest films "Playing Cards" (Une partie de cartes) (1896) is, indeed, a remake of the Lumière film, "Card Game" (Partie de cartes) (1895). As the apocryphal story goes, Méliès accidentally discovered trick photography while filming a traffic scene. The camera jammed in the midst of filming, but he was able to get it to work again and resume shooting. The jump cut, or stop-substitution effect, made it appear that a carriage transformed into a hearse and that men turned into women. However, the Edison Company had already realized such an effect, furthered by splicing, such as in "The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots" (1895). Perhaps, Méliès was inspired by one of these films. After all, he did purchase films from the Edison Company to project at his Robert Houdin Theatre before he set out on making his own pictures. It's known that he did have a copy of "Annabelle Serpentine Dance" (1895)--a film that of which hand-colored prints were sold; Likewise, Méliès would offer hand-colored prints of his films at extra cost, which was the case with "The Vanishing Lady".

Thus, "The Vanishing Lady" isn't novel so much for its tricks; yet, it's novel for the presentation of those tricks. In "The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots", the stop-substitution effect serves the historical reenactment, and the filmmakers attempted to conceal the trick. Méliès's film, however, is for--is about--the tricks, with the magic act serving to present them. This seems to explain why the Edison Company found little use initially for stop action and editing until they later began to make imitations of Méliès's films. Moreover, as Tom Gunning has explained as the "cinema of attractions", these early films are about presentation and not, as in later narrative films, representation. Later, Méliès would also be instrumental in the development of narrative films.

The vanishing lady trick is based on an actual magic act by Joseph Buatier de Kolta, which Méliès surely could have reproduced on film if he so desired. Indeed, he had previously performed the act on stage at his Robert Houdin theatre. The newspaper bit was important for the traditional magic act, but is only a decorative relic here. Instead, for the film, he employs three stop-substitutions (or, to use a term that recognizes the importance of editing: "substitution splicing")--to make a woman disappear, to make a skeleton appear and then to make the woman reappear--which he would touchup by splicing. Méliès uses especial filmic effects for presentation and, in turn, makes the film about the presentation of this magic. Méliès had invented cinema magic.

There's another trick in this film. The stage setting, with the painted background, is an artificial set created for the film. Méliès, the true auteur that he was, was also responsible for the stage designs of his films. This film was actually filmed outdoors--probably at his garden at Montreuil--for the natural lighting (see the shadows). The film's original French title refers to the act taking place within the Robert Houdin theatre. This wasn't true for the filming of the act, but it was true for its exhibition when Méliès projected the film to his audience.