L'Homme-orchestre

One of the visual effects that French "Cinemagician" Georges Méliès pioneered and mastered was the double exposure, in which a piece of film is exposed twice, to two different images. The resulting photographic image shows the second image superimposed over the first. 'L' Homme orchestre' is, for its time, a rather advanced experiment into his effect, and, rather than just two images captured together, Méliès has created seven clones of himself, each posing as the various members of an orchestra. As the first magician/musician eases himself onto the first chair, another semi-transparent double rises from his body to occupy the second chair, and so forth.

After the enthusiastic "one-man band" has performed a musical piece, they sequentially dissolve into one another, leaving only the conductor of the orchestra, who hangs around for one final display of magic. As a large fan emerges behind him (apparently to his complete surprise, as Méliès demonstrates one of those classic silent comedy double-takes), the conductor takes a seat on the single remaining chair, which sinks into the floor. Quick as a flash, a semi-transparent Méliès comes hurtling from behind the fan, disappearing on impact with the floor with one of those whiz-bang puffs of smoke that the director so adored. The huge fan lowers again to reveal a smugly-grinning Méliès standing there, safe and well.

More than a century after it was produced, 'L' Homme orchestre,' though not popularly known among most people, is notable in its innovative use of a newly-discovered visual effect, and as a brief demonstration of Georges Méliès' boundless creativity and enthusiasm. If you've got a couple of minutes of spare time, why not occupy yourself by watching this enjoyable little film?

One-Man Band, The (1900)

*** (out of 4)

aka L'Homme orchestre

This here is one of director Melies best known and loved films. Melies plays a band leader and we see his spirits or doubles, come to life and make for an entire band. Buster Keaton would somewhat redo this film two decades later in The Play House and in my opinion it can't hold a candle to this film. The special effects hold up quite well and the way the spirits come to be is nicely done. Melies was certainly a genius and this is one of the highlights of his career.

Georges Melies was the founder of special effects in movies. Its really quite wonderful watching these little shorts: imagine you had the opportunity to realise for the first time the things that were possible with filmed images. By filming a scene, then removing or moving one element and filming it again and editing the two shots together you can make things disappear or jump from one side of the room to the other. This is true magic, and watching Melies discover these things is a special thing i'm glad i've had the opportunity to see.

Aside from this value, the shorts still retain their immense fun for audiences an entire century after their creation. Now THAT is called staying power.

In this short, Melies clones himself six times to fill six seats of an orchestra, then makes the seats disappear, then reappear, then makes himself disappear in a cloud of smoke. The music, i believe is Robert Israel, a great modern composer who's been doing us the honour of writing scores for many great silent movies, which adds immeasurably to our enjoyment of them.

To imagine this film is over 100 years old is already quite a bit take in, but then you realize even now you don't know how he does his magic without looking it up somewhere. Méliès was truly one of the greatest artists in the history of cinema and we owe him a great big deal for what we have today.

I'm sure there has been at least one time in our lives when we wanted to replicate ourselves. Just this weekend I needed to wash my car, get gas, go to the store, and do laundry. I did two of the four things. It was too damn hot! If I could've replicated myself, I could've gotten all four things done with minimal effort.

In "The One Man Orchestra" Georges Meilies does replicate himself to become a seven piece orchestra. You know what they say, "If you want things done right, then do them yourself." Georges, with the help of some camera tricks, made it seem like he filled seven seats and then reconsolidated back to one individual.

To create the illusion of seven identical musicians, the film required seven simultaneous multiple exposures; only one other known Méliès film, The Melomaniac, uses so many exposures at once.