Le Chaudron infernal

While an enormously influential pioneer on the field of special effects, French director Georges Méliès was oddly not that interested in making color films in his career. The reasons behind this apparent lack of interest were probably related to how costly and laborious was the process of hand-coloring frame by frame, as while his first hand-colored movie was done in 1897 ("L'Hallucination De l'Alchimiste"), he wouldn't attempt to make another one until 1903, when the hand-colored movies done by Edison's Studios became to be as popular as his films. That year, right after the enormous success of his masterpiece, "Le Voyage Dans la Lune" ("A Trip to the Moon"), Méliès directed 3 shorts that he colored himself: "La Guirlande Merveilleuse", "Le Cake-walk infernal" and "Le Chaudron infernal". Of the three, "Le Chaudron infernal" (or "The Infernal Cauldron") is the most well-known, mainly because this film followed Méliès' interest in the horror genre.

"Le Chaudron infernal" (also known as "The Infernal Boiling Pot" by some sources) is a movie about an evil green-skinned Demon (Georges Méliès, of course), who works as an executioner in Hell. Another demon in charge of bringing him the condemned, begins his work by sending a woman to the Executioner, who joyfully ties her and throws her into the big cauldron he has in his room. His assistant brings him another two condemned, this time two male courtiers, who follow the woman to her fate inside the boiling pot. As the bodies enter the cauldron the infernal flames grow bigger and reach an enormous size. After putting the three inside the cauldron, the Demon stirs up the remains and suddenly the smoke that comes from the cauldron begins to form images that resemble the bodies of the condemned. Realizing that this are the souls trying to escape, the Demon will raise the fire from Hell to stop them from escaping.

Among Méliès' many fantasy films, "Le Chaudron infernal" is definitely one of the most impressive of all despite its short runtime, as the addition of color takes the film to a whole new level, making Méliès' many tricks look even more amazing than before. To his usual array of dissolves and camera tricks, Méliès added the effects of drawing over the celluloid (an effect made famous years later by the "Godzilla" films of the 60s), using the hand-coloring technique not only to make the film look nicer, but to make an effect in itself. On a completely different subject, it's interesting to see that in this movie Méliès continues his preference for themes of horror and black magic, as he knows that it's in the horror genre where he'll be able to exploit his special effects to shock and impress his audience.

Being objective, the only problem of "Le Chaudron infernal" is definitely its runtime, as considering that by 1903 Georges Méliès had already done "Le Voyage Dans la Lune", one would think that this film is a bit too short. However, there is a reason for this considerably shorter runtime: it's short because the process of coloring the film was lengthy, and Méliès wasn't able to make longer colored films (and as written above, that's why he only made 7 colored shorts in his career). Despite this problems, "Le Chaudron infernal" is definitely one of the most interesting movies done by the legendary French magician, not only because of its inventive use of color as a special effect, but also because of its place in the history of the horror genre. This movie is definitely pure Cinemagic. 8/10

1903 was a terrific year for Méliès, as he created his greatest and most amazing film, Le Voyage Dans le Lune. It is STILL an amazing and cute little film that was longer and more complex than any previous film. Its use of trick cinematography, great sets and innovations make it a truly landmark film. And, while Le Chaudron Infernal is STILL an amazing film, it pales in comparison to some of these other films.

Interestingly enough, the film is in color--featuring each individual cel having been hand-painted! This, plus the cool camera tricks make this a standout film. Now as far as plots go, it's pretty weird stuff. Two demons are chucking damned souls into a cauldron and ultimately summon their spirits using incantations! There's really no more plot than that--and that's why it is a tad disappointing.

If you want to see this film online, go to Google and type in "Méliès" and then click the video button for a long list of his films that are viewable without special software.

This is an awesome, old little short. Its pretty funny watching these crazy blue demons guys boil a bunch of random people and extract their souls. Pretty gruesome for its age, don't you think?

The way the blue demon guys dance around and gesture is hilarious.

Georges Méliès directed this short macabre film about two demons throwing people into a boiling pot of water. Not only does the film contain all the visual trickery that is associated with the director but it also has the added bonus of being hand coloured. This adds a nice extra dimension to the look. The green demons and the red flames are particularly memorable. The best effect in the film is the image of the spirits rising into the air from the bubbling cauldron. They are nice spooky and ghostly apparitions. The film is too short to really work as a horror picture. The horror film needed more time to work on the viewers emotions than these ancient short films allowed. Still it's most definitely one of the earliest macabre films in existence, and is well worth seeing, as it will possibly take you more time to read this review than it would be to actually watch this fascinating old movie.

This film, "The Infernal Caldron" is a single-scene trick film by Georges Méliès, who made many such subjects, which creatively exploited cinematic techniques, mostly substitution splices and multiple-exposure photography. This film is the earliest one that I recall where the filmmaker used multiple exposures to create such indistinguishable ghostly images. I know that he had made ghosts or spirits with the technique before, such as in "A Fantastical Meal" (1900), as had other early filmmakers, but those ghosts that I've seen are distinguished as human looking—only fainter or more transparent in appearance than the living. The trick for the blurry ghost blobs in "The Infernal Caldron" was to alter the lens to go out of focus for their exposure. Méliès repeated the trick for his next film, "Apparitions" (Le Revenant)(1903).

Additionally, this particular trick film remains appealing today because it's available in a vibrant hand-colored print. The color especially aids in making the fire red, as well as bringing attention to the décor and costumes. In the film, the director plays a demon who places people in a cauldron. The out-of-focus spirits fly out of the cauldron and then transform into fireballs. There are quite a few macabre little pictures among Méliès's surviving films, but this is one of my favorites.

P.S. Many, if not most, of Méliès's films were offered to be hand-painted for exhibitors (for an additional fee). Most films from this era are lost, and many of the films that do survive and that were in color have lost their paint over time or only remain in prints that weren't colorized. An all-female staff headed by a Madame Thullier, reportedly, provided the color for all such Star Films, from 1896 or 1897 to 1910, as well as for other French studios. The coloring was done manually in an assembly-line procedure, film-by-film, frame-by-frame, with each laborer specializing in a certain color. Otherwise, some fairground exhibitors may have colored their own prints to cut costs. Later, Pathé's stencil process made coloring easier and more consistent (main source: Frazer, "Artificially Arranged Scenes").