 |
| Asa Butterfield and Chloë Grace Moretz in Hugo |
Between 1896 and 1914 French filmmaker George Méliés directed more than 500 films. At one point—because Méliés, like many early film pioneers, failed to adequately preserve his work—nearly all of them were thought to be lost (many of the film negatives were melted down during World War I to make rubber heels for the boots of French soldiers). A magician by trade, Méliés was fascinated by the advent of motion pictures, which allowed him to further hone his craft through time lapse photography, stop-start editing, and other forms of cinematic trickery like double exposure. While inventors Auguste and Louis Lumiére saw movies as little more than a passing fad—and were merely interested in producing short documentaries like the 50-second The Arrival of a Train at La Coitat Station (1895), which, as the title tells the viewer, showed nothing more than a train pulling into a station—Méliés understood that movies could entertain and delight through their ability to manipulate reality.
