The Witch (1906)

Original title

La Fée Carabosse

Directed by

Georges Méliès

Genre

fantasy film, silent film

Country

France

Runtime

12 min

Rating

6.3 of 10 from 43 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A poor troubadour learns from a witch that he is destined to rescue a damsel in distress. He cheats the witch out of a magic charm, and she chases him across a landscape filled with ghosts, druids, and monsters.

whimsicalplayfulfast-pacedvisually inventivelightheartedfantasticalold-fashionedspectacular

What happens

The Witch (French: La Fée Carabosse ou le Poignard fatal, literally "The Fairy Carabosse or the Fatal Poignard") is a 1906 French short silent film by Georges Méliès. The film is named for a witch, Carabosse, who tells a poor troubadour that he is destined to rescue a damsel in distress, but demands a high price for a magic charm to help the troubadour in his quest. When the troubadour cheats the witch to obtain the magic charm, she sets out in pursuit of him, and puts various obstacles in his way before finally being vanquished by forces of good. The film, said to have been inspired by Breton folklore, combines the traditional figure of Carabosse—first created in a 17th-century literary fairy tale by Madame d'Aulnoy—with a varied array of other magical and legendary elements, including ghosts, Druids, and monstrous beasts. It was commissioned by the Grands Magasins Dufayel department store, for children to watch while their parents shopped. Méliès made the film as a lavish, special-effects-heavy spectacle in the féerie tradition, possibly appearing in it himself. A print of the film survives; historians have commented on the film's spectacular qualities, its hodgepodge of fairy-tale attractions, and the ambiguous question of whether Carabosse's defeat is morally justified in the world of the film. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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