Quatro Cabeças é Melhor que Uma

Not only is this a clever use of the limited technology of the time, it is an utterly hilarious minute. Melies plays the main character, a man who is able to remove his own head and put it on a table. Now there are two heads, but that's only the beginning. I see this guy sitting up nights, imagining what this new form of entertainment can do and then improvising how he can manage it.

For 1898 totally amazing. Even when we rode around like cars on our buts in the early 70s it was amazing. He was the first and father of imagination of that sort.

"The Four Troublesome Heads" is one of the earliest surviving films by Georges Méliès to employ the multiple exposure technique, or superimposition effect. He used the technique earlier in "The Cabinet of Mephistopheles" (Le Cebinet de Méphistophélès)(1897), but it appears to be lost. (There's also a brief superimposition in "The Magician" (Le magicien)(1898), for a head on a stand.) It's uncertain whether Méliès or George Albert Smith introduced the trick to cinema, although what seems to be the earliest relevant film that I know of is the aforementioned film by Méliès. Smith tried to patent "the invention of double exposure applied to animated photography", but that was frivolous since the technique was already in use in still photography. Somewhere from around July to October 1898, Smith made at least six films that employed the trick. In "The Corsican Brothers", "Photographing a Ghost" and "The Mesmerist, or Body and Soul", Smith used multiple exposures to make transparent ghosts. He also used the technique, coupled with a masked camera lens, to create a scene-within-a-scene vision in "The Corscican Brothers", "Cinderella", "Faust and Mephistopheles" and "Santa Claus". In regards to masking the camera, Smith, indeed, seems to have introduced it to motion pictures. Méliès would later use masking for his multiple-exposure trick films, such as "A Mysterious Portrait" (Le Portrait Mystérieux) (1899) and "The One-Man Band" (L' Homme orchestre) (1900). Nevertheless, the uncertainty is somewhat moot given that Méliès and Smith are known to have had discussions around the time of these inventions, and both filmmakers were leaders in exploring the possibilities of motion pictures.

The superimpositions of "The Four Troublesome Heads" are not for ghosts, but, rather, are for four cloned heads of same texture; this effect of same texture is achieved with the black background. In this film, Méliès accomplished the headless and no body effects by masking himself with black clothing. Additionally, a dummy head was used while the Méliès with a body moved the heads to the table. For these transitions, Méliès employed his second essential trick of stop-substitutions (a.k.a. substitution splicing). The camera operator stopped the camera – the scene was rearranged – and filming resumed. They are essentially jump cuts touched up by post-production splicing. Méliès had already used the stop-substitution trick in such films as "The Vanishing Lady" (Escamotage d'une dame au théâtre Robert Houdin) (1896), and it would continue to be probably his most used trick during his film-making career.

Yet, these tricks are only of a technical and filmic history interest without Méliès's unique showmanship and enthusiasm, which was largely responsible for the immense popularity of his films in his own day and the preference of today's audiences for the films of Méliès over those by other early filmmakers. Méliès was, indeed, more cultured and absorbed with theatrical traditions than were his contemporaries. Later, filmmakers would surpass much of his theatrical style, but at the time of this film, he was leading the way with it.

Okay, this is NOT a great film compared to later films--even the later films of this film's creator, Méliès (who created many, many magical films such as Le Voyage Dans le Lune). But, and this is the important part, for 1898, the film is without peer for its brilliant use of camera tricks. Like ALL other films of the era, this is a short film--lasting between one and two minutes (depending on the frame rate at which it is played), but in all other respects it is different. Showing his love for the absurd and fantastic, Méliès features a performer who pulls off his head and places it on a table--where it sings away. Then, a new head re-appears and he does it again until there are four heads in total!! It is amazing for its time and not to be missed by film historians.

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.

I saw that one teen boy gave this short (how else to call a movie lasting only 50 seconds?) a poor 2 out of 10. No sense of history there. Un Homme de Têtes may not even last a minute, but it's incredibly fast-paced and extremely well done. Hey, it even looks more convincing than most of those computer-generated special effects you see in the cinemas these days.

Méliès takes off his head a few times and sings a song with the head clones. A simple idea but brilliantly executed by the cinemagician (as the French DVD aptly describes this pioneer).