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.

The early cinema must have been so much fun for audiences. In this one, a magician brings out a woman, sits her down in a chair, throws a scarf over her, and she disappears. He again puts the scarf down and she transforms into a human skeleton. This little thing is a first in special effects. There are some moments that don't work, but all in all, it functions pretty well.

"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.

Things happened fast in the first few years of film - less than a couple of years before, the Lumiere brothers showed their first film - workers leaving their factory, one minute's worth - at the Societe d'Encouragement a l'Industrie Nationale. In late 1896, George Melies made this film, which quite simply shows a woman changing into a skeleton & back again. He used stop action of course, which every kid with a video camera has done by now, but at the time it was sensational.

Melies made his name & fame with such camera tricks in the cinema's early days - but whether he was the first to do the stop-frame thing is contested, as an Englishman named G.A. Smith was experimenting with the same things at the same time.

I still think, though, this particular trick is kinda neat.