Le scarabée d'or

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.

A stage magician dressed as an Arab comes onstage to perform a series of conjuring tricks, including making beautiful women in strange costumes and a fireworks display. The print, like many of the period, is elaborately tinted. Although the background is black-and-white, the performers' clothes are brightly colored, probably stencil-tinted.

It's one of the many magic act shorts that Segundo de Chomon directed, in imitation of the popular shorts of George's Melies. The effects are similar, and the costuming is much more elaborate. Pathe, the production company, was a bigger affair than Melies, having motion picture and sound recording divisions. This meant they could outspend Melies, and that eventually drove him out of the business. That would not happen, however, for a few years.

The Golden Beetle (1907)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

During the 1890s and the early part of the next decade, French master Georges Melies was the master at trick films. By the time THE GOLDEN BEETLE came along the French master was falling behind on the times and other filmmakers were taking over the genre that he helped build and this film is the perfect example of that. The story is pretty simple as a person is haunted by the title character.

What's so fascinating about this film is its colors. Hand tinting had been going on for quite a while but the job done here is rather amazing and it's really hard to believe that this picture was from 1907. In fact, you could easily pass this off as a real Technicolor film because the colors are just so gorgeous to look at. There's no question that it's the colors that leap off the screen but I also thought the special effects seen in the movie were quite good as well. The story itself is rather simple but it works good enough with everything else that is going on.

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.

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.