Le Portrait mystérieux

I understand what Cineanalyst said about how Méliès wanted his audiences to know his trickery was artificial, and I certainly don't disagree with this reasoning, but I believe the way he has a different backdrop at the beginning of this short is simply for the purposes of advertisement. The posters on this first backdrop clearly advertise his shows at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin (that is, if you can see through the poorness of the print) so in a way, Méliès was trying to broadcast his live magic performances while illustrating it with this simple, yet impossible-to-do-without-effects, gimmick. This is not to say he created this short entirely for advertisement; on the contrary, this first backdrop is only there at the very beginning, and there is no particular emphasis on its intentions. Then again, I suppose the prints Méliès had first shown his audiences back in 1899 were not as decomposed as the available one now and made the audiences clearer on what the purpose of the original backdrop was.

With that said, this little magic show is one of the Méliès works which focus entirely on a single gimmick. Instead of a series of trick shots, as in "The Magician" (1898) and "The Astronomer's Dream" (also 1898), "The Mysterious Portrait" focuses, in this case, on the concept of Méliès creating a living version of himself inside a picture frame. Even though it seems simple enough, it was not easy to make, involving two separate shots, one superimposed into the other. Considering this short was made only in 1899, it is actually astonishing to see how good the double-exposure looks when viewed now. And let us not forget Méliès's charm that he shows onscreen when interacting with his selfie, and how the portrait resents the magician making him vanish from the frame again. No matter what subject, comedy was always an ingredient to successful filmmaking in Méliès's filmography. A simple diversion, but a good one at that and also one of two films by the same director that feature the lens de-focusing combined with matte shots--the other one being "Summoning the Spirits" from the same year, which uses a similar concept as well.

This appears to be Geroges Méliès's earliest (surviving) film to feature a matte shot. George Albert Smith had already employed the trick in several films, including, the only one that survives today, "Santa Claus" (1898), where he used a matte shot to feature a scene-within-a-scene and, thus, show parallel action without crosscutting. In "The Mysterious Portrait", Méliès used multiple-exposure photography to duplicate himself—placing himself inside a portrait and outside of it. Méliès had already used multiple-exposure photography in prior films, including "The Four Troublesome Heads" (1898), but they weren't matte shots. For this film, he had to mask the camera, which, for one, allows the second exposure to appear clearly against a white or light background, as in this film. It's the same trick used in the early film-within-films, beginning with Robert W. Paul's "The Countryman and the Cinematograph" (1901) and which include Méliès's own "The Magic Lantern" (1903). For the out of blur appearance and blurry disappearance of Méliès's framed double, the focus of the camera lens was adjusted during the second filming.

As historian John Frazer ("Artificially Arranged Scenes") has said, "The Mysterious Portrait" is self-referential: "Méliès was reveling in the devices of film-making, making the appreciation of his cleverness the actual subject." The film begins with Méliès rolling up a backdrop to reveal another backdrop, thus exposing and calling attention to the film's own artificiality. Méliès's doppelgänger is a self-reflexive device mirroring the doubling, reproduced nature of cinema. As Frazer said, "Méliès was the first filmmaker who deliberately pushed himself into the illusion of the film. He was conscious of making films and informing his audience that it was watching a film…. Méliès let everyone know that he was watching artifice and fiction."

(Note: Print shows some bleeding and many scratches indicative of considerable deterioration, but is still viewable.)

The quality of this was so poor that I didn't enjoy it very much. I get the idea. Like a Rene Magritte painting, the portrait is both two and three dimensional. It has life to it. The artist is able to move in and out of the frame. It just didn't capture my attention the way some of the others have. Melies' delight with himself is at least a selling point.

Mysterious Portrait, The (1899)

** (out of 4)

aka Le Portrait mysterieux

Melies once again plays a magician who brings a portrait to life. This is certainly one of the director's gimmick films as he plays the picture in the middle of the floor while he stands to the side and makes the images come to life. One of the best sequences is when Melies puts himself in the picture while, at the same time, he stands outside and gives orders. The special effects are noticeable here but the film remains fun throughout its short running time. This isn't one of the director's greatest films but it is a cute one.

"Le Portrait Mystérieux" is a very short film, as were all of Georges Méliès and other filmmakers' work back in 1899. This one is a bit shorter than usual, at only a bit over a minute in length.

In the film, you see the filmmaker's background as a stage magician. It's all very staged, as you see Georges Méliès enter the picture carrying an enormous empty frame. He sets it up and using magic makes a duplicate of himself appear inside the frame.

This is a very good trick for 1899, though the other Georges Méliès inside the frame is now well centered. This sort of trick photography was in its infancy and so I'll cut it some slack. For it's time, it's pretty good though it could have used more...more than just about 75 seconds worth of entertainment.