Les cartes vivantes

Melies does some excellent work here. First of all, his work with the magical cards is nice. The quality of the film makes us see the great one and his presence so much better than the past. He doe multiple tricks with cards turning into people and vice-versa. I really like his finale when he, himself, goes through the big card and appears in another place. But there is even more.

One thing that always comes over in a George Melies film is the man's energy and heightened sense of fun. He must have been exhausting to work with. Here he adopts the persona of stage magician - which is exactly what he used to be in the years before film - to perform card tricks. These are no ordinary playing cards, however, because he increases their size ten-fold so that the audience can see their face value.

The film is a series of trick shots, which makes the stage element redundant really, and in less talented hands these might quickly grow dull. But Melies certainly knew how to entertain his audience, and throws in a couple of clever surprises to round things off. This is one of Melies' less extravagant films, but it's still great fun to watch.

Few persons have meant as much to the history of cinema as Georges Méliès, the now legendary French stage magician that revolutionized film-making with his enormous narrative creativity and his many discoveries and inventions in the field of special effects. As a member of the first audience that experienced the Lumières' first screening, Méliès discovered cinema and immediately realized the enormous potential it had as a narrative art. During the following 15 years, Méliès would become one of the most important producers of movies, and he went from making amusing "gimmick movies" (films about Méliès making an impossible magic trick) to creating some of the most amazing stories of those years, using his skills to enter the genres of horror, fantasy and science fiction. By the year of 1902, Méliès was focusing more on his major projects than on "gimmick movies", but he still made several ones to test some new tricks. 1904's "Les Cartes Vivantes" was one of those shorts.

As usual in his "gimmick films", "Les Cartes Vivantes" (literally, "The Living Playing Cards") is about a Magician (Méliès) performing an amazing magic trick. This time, the trick involves a simple deck of playing cards, and a large cardboard that resembles a blank card. The trick begins with the Magician making one card grow bigger, to the size of a book. Then, by simply throwing the card towards the cardboard, it becomes an enormous version of the card the Magician threw. As if that wasn't enough, the Magician transforms the giant card (a 9 of Spades) into the card of the Queen of Hearts. With that card on the cardboard, the Magician proceeds to to make the image come alive by transforming the drawing into a real life Queen of Hearts who walks out of the card. To finish the trick, he returns the Queen to the card and decides to transform the card into the King of Clubs; but the trick may be really on him.

As written above, for Méliès this kind of short films were more than a way of having a fresh and original catalog of movies in his theater, they were a chance to test new or improved tricks and special effects he could later use in his major projects. "The Living Playing Cards" is a prime example of this, as it is composed of many of the tricks that Méliès had used in many previous occasions (dissolves, multiple exposures and several editing tricks), but the way they look in this movie is considerably better than when Méliès used them for the first time. When one watches the movies Méliès did before 1901, the effects look marvelous but primitive; "The Living Playing Cards" is the direct evolution of his talents, and it's easy to notice that his work of editing has improved considerably since his early years. His use of props and set design to build up an atmosphere has also improved, and he captures perfectly what his real performances as a magician would had been.

Honestly, there's nothing really remarkable in "Les Cartes Vivantes" besides its amazing display of special effects, but like every Méliès film, it has a special magic that makes difficult not to enjoy them. Méliès had an enormous charm as a performer, and despite the shortcomings of the technology of his time, he really knew how to use cinema's potential to entertain his audience the best he could. While in the end, "The Living Playing Cards" may not be anything more than a "gimmick trick", one has to remember that in 1904, the legendary Méliès was preparing his most ambitious project to date: that often forgotten masterpiece named "Le Voyage à Travers l'impossible", better known in English as "The Voyage Through the Impossible". 8/10

Georges Melies appears as a magician to do some card tricks. These however are not you typical card tricks. Melies makes the cards bigger and then they appear on the big white sheet of paper behind him. But then even more crazy magic appears. The playing cards come to life. First the queen and then the king. Then Melies reveals to the audience that he somehow duplicated himself and reveals the king to be another Melies. Then when the show is done, Melies wraps everything up and leaves. It's entertaining, as it holds you're interest for the 3 minutes that it is. As is usually the case with Melies films the special effects are good, so yeah. Go see it if you're a Melies fan.

Living Playing Cards, The (1905)

*** (out of 4)

aka Les Cartes vivantes

Extremely entertaining and fun film from the French master has him playing (what else) a magician who puts a plane piece of paper on a stool and magically turns it into cards. He then takes the trick even further by having the Queen and King walk off the paper. This here is certainly one of the director's most known films as the tricks are pure magic even though it's obvious to see how they're done. What makes this film work so well is the fact that Melies, the actor, really is charming and sells everything we're seeing. He has that certain grace about him that draws you to whatever he's doing and whoever is playing the King is also a real hoot. The final trick in the film is priceless and makes this one of the more memorable films from the director.