Le scarabée d'or

A stage magician dressed as an Arab comes onstage to perform a series of conjuring tricks, including making beautiful women in strange costumes and a fireworks display. The print, like many of the period, is elaborately tinted. Although the background is black-and-white, the performers' clothes are brightly colored, probably stencil-tinted.

It's one of the many magic act shorts that Segundo de Chomon directed, in imitation of the popular shorts of George's Melies. The effects are similar, and the costuming is much more elaborate. Pathe, the production company, was a bigger affair than Melies, having motion picture and sound recording divisions. This meant they could outspend Melies, and that eventually drove him out of the business. That would not happen, however, for a few years.

This is one of the most unusual early films I've seen. But the color kept my interest in this. I expected it to be more than just a single scene, since Pathe had just come off producing the monumental feature- film "Le Vie et la Passion de Jesus-Christ" (1905). But I was satisfied with how it turned out, because "Life and Passion" was still probably being paid off. See it for it's artsy nature and it's somewhat surrealist nature. One thing I'd like to know though is how the heck they accomplished those special effects. Especially when the beetle is floating around in some egg-shaped sphere around her oppressor, the sorcerer.

In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Georges Méliès made a great name for himself with his many wonderful films. Méliès had been a stage magician and decided to go into film making. At first, many of his films consisted of him standing on stage performing tricks that were mostly done by stopping the camera and then restarting it--making things seem like they are appearing and disappearing. By today's standards, it's pretty obvious what is happening, but in his day, this was great stuff. So great, in fact, that many (including Edison and some other French film makers) blatantly copied the Méliès films. While I can't recall another Méliès film exactly like this one, many were copied practically scene for scene and "creative borrowing" was rampant in this day and age.

As I stated above, this does not appear to be a direct copy but is instead strongly inspired by the films of Georges Méliès. Like this master s work, this film shows a many on stage doing some conjuring--though this time he's dressed like an Arab. Méliès occasionally dressed this way, too, though in most of his films in this style he's wearing a tux like a stage magician. And, like Méliès, things begin to appear and disappear by using the same techniques. However, there's more to this one than most copies of the Méliès style, as the magician crawls around stage in a very peculiar way (I'm still at a loss as to why he does this). Additionally, the film uses wonderfully hand-painted cells to make it look like a color film. Georges Méliès also occasionally did this, but with THE GOLDEN BEETLE, the paint job was terrific--even better than the Méliès hand-painted films. Seeing the weird looking lady dressed as a beetle was impressive as she appeared silver and gold.

Now as for exactly what happens in the film, I am at a bit of a loss. It looks almost as if the film makers were on LSD, as it gets pretty weird and confusing. Still, I liked the colorful beetle-lady and it was fun to watch so I'm giving it a 7. Had it been more original, the score would have no doubt been much higher.

The Golden Beetle (1907)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

During the 1890s and the early part of the next decade, French master Georges Melies was the master at trick films. By the time THE GOLDEN BEETLE came along the French master was falling behind on the times and other filmmakers were taking over the genre that he helped build and this film is the perfect example of that. The story is pretty simple as a person is haunted by the title character.

What's so fascinating about this film is its colors. Hand tinting had been going on for quite a while but the job done here is rather amazing and it's really hard to believe that this picture was from 1907. In fact, you could easily pass this off as a real Technicolor film because the colors are just so gorgeous to look at. There's no question that it's the colors that leap off the screen but I also thought the special effects seen in the movie were quite good as well. The story itself is rather simple but it works good enough with everything else that is going on.

One of those early silent shorts that gets in and gets out very quickly, in under 3 minutes, and involves a great amount of magic, and the composition is all in one long shot (which is part of the magic part since it involves dissolves and a lot of super-impositions and other early goodies of the cinematic trade). In this case some dude is skulking around, a beetle is crawling on the wall, and then the beetle turns into a woman! Holy Beatles, Batman! It's mostly about showing off color - yes, this is one of the early examples of using color in a silent film, albeit it's scattered - but most notably is the ending, which is actually rather messed up. I know that's not a very articulate way of describing it, but when you watch what happens with this Skulking Man who may or may not have somehow offended this Beetle Woman (who also returns with two, uh, female assistants), you'll likely do as I do and yell out "WHOA!" at what happens to this guy. Not a lot really *happens* in this short, but what does counts.