Visite sous-marine du Maine

The wreck of the Maine during the Spanish-American War was a huge event. Melies took this event to do a movie where divers go down and explore the wreckage. At one point, they find a dead woman and send her up on a rope. To give the appearance of being underwater, the director shoots it through a fish tank (I'm guessing). As various fish, including one goldfish, swim by, the divers do their work. It would have appealed to those who heard of the event, but had no clue as to what was its fate.

Georges Melies, the magician turned pioneering filmmaker envisioned how a salvage operation on the USS Maine, sunk in Havanna harbor would look. This very old ,very short film from 1898 takes a fanciful look at what the divers might have encountered. Painted set of the wreck was filmed in front of a large glass tank with fishes swimming about give it a sort of real look even though the film has a very stylized, almost dream like quality to it. From what I understand, the first and last parts of it are missing, so only this this middle part survives. Maybe someday they'll turn up. Karel Zeman, the Czech animator-director of fantasy films was obviously inspired by the underwater scenes when he made 'The Fabulous World of Jules Verne' A. K. A 'Vynalez Zkazy' (1958).

Divers At Work on the Wreck of The "Maine" (1898)

*** (out of 4)

aka Visite sous-marine du Maine

Here's a pretty fun film from director Melies. As the title suggests, a group of divers are working at the bottom of the sea on a ship that hit something and sunk. There's really nothing too special about this film and it works better as something macabre instead of something magical. There's one sequence where one of the diver's bring out a dead woman and have to attach her to a rope and send her to the top of the water. There are countless fish swimming throughout the scene and I guess this is the only special effects that really go on. It would be interesting to know how people took this film back when it was released considering how many ship wrecks there actually were at the time. There's nothing too special here but it makes for a fun minute.

Melies always kept the American market in mind when he made film and early on sent his brother to New York to open up an office. where said brother produced westerns for the company. He liked to employ Francis Ford, who later became a big star and gave his brother Jack his start.... who became John Ford. So the link from Georges Melies to John Wayne is not that far.

I don't think that Melies did this one through double-exposure. I think he put a thin fish tank in front of his actors and chivvied the fish back and forth -- including at least one goldfish.

This is one of the many previously lost or infrequently seen Melies pictures that have been made available by Serge Bromberg, David Shepherd and a myriad of other hands in the newly issued DVD set GEORGES MELIES: FIRST WIZARD OF CINEMA. Required viewing for anyone interested in the history of movies ..... and a lot of fun.

"Divers at Work on the Wreck of the Maine" is not an exceptionally extraordinary work by French filmmaker Georges Méliès, but it has an interesting context, as well as a background, to it. Undoubtedly, the short was inspired by the blowing up of the 'Maine' during the Spanish-American War, and is thus a mere reconstruction detailing the events. (I know very little about the history so I'll leave you to do your own research about the event). Originally, filmmaker Méliès had created three films detailing the incident as a sort of trilogy, although very unfortunately this one is the only surviving installment. Furthermore, and as far as I know, there were no 'divers' who went down to work on the wreck, indicating this movie was intended as a kind of fictitious epilogue to the incident. His other two shorts, both also reconstructions, were "The Blowing Up of the Maine in Havana Harbor" and "A View of the Wreck of the Maine" (although the latter may also have been an alternate version of this short). It can also be noted that made right before this trilogy Méliès also released "Collision and Shipwreck at Sea" which was another possible reconstruction of incidents from the same war (according to the film historian John Frazer). As it is also lost now, however, there is no true evidence.

Because these newsreels were indeed reconstructions, it's interesting to think if Méliès was trying to fool audiences into thinking it the real thing. This was obviously not true of another later reconstruction ("The Coronation of Edward VII" of 1902) since the poster for that film blatantly stated it was a recreation. "Divers at Work on the Wreck of the Maine", for the time, is actually amazingly convincing. Not only does the director here paint a pretty convincing set of the sunken ship and uses some interesting diving suit costumes, he also uses the concept of shooting the film through a fish tank to add to the realism of the movie. This an innovation and looks much better than other reconstructions of the time, and as always proves Méliès's commitment to realism. Little actually happens in it otherwise (although it does use a mannequin to simulate a corpse) but it uses these ideas to create a convincing enough effect.

On its own, this one-minute work isn't much to talk about, except for that it uses the limited technology of then to create a realistic look to the setting. In the end, probably only something of interesting to fans of the director: partly because of lack of camera tricks, partly because Méliès isn't playing a role onscreen (as far as we know), and partly because there's little action to fill the run-time that will entertain people today.