Underplayed Gems

Escamotage d'une dame au théâtre Robert Houdin (1896)

Escamotage d'une dame au théâtre Robert Houdin poster
Original title
Escamotage d'une dame chez Robert-Houdin
Directed by
Georges Méliès
Genre
fantasy film, silent film
Country
France
Runtime
1 min
Rating
6.3 of 10 from 131 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

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How it feels

A magician makes a lady vanish on a stage set in a garden. A skeleton appears in her place, then she comes back for a bow.

playfulwhimsicalbrieftheatricalsilenttrick-filledexperimentalstage-like

What happens

The Vanishing Lady (French: Escamotage d'une dame chez Robert-Houdin, literally "Magical Disappearance of a Lady at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin") is an 1896 French silent trick film directed by Georges Méliès. It features Méliès and Jehanne d'Alcy performing a trick in the manner of a stage illusion, in which D'Alcy disappears into thin air. A skeleton appears in her place before she finally returns for a curtain call. The film, shot outdoors in Méliès's garden on a platform decorated with theatrical scenery, is based on a famous stage illusion by Buatier de Kolta, in which a woman disappeared by escaping through a hidden trapdoor. However, using an editing technique known as the substitution splice, Méliès carried out the trick using cinematic special effects rather than conventional stage machinery. The substitution splice also allowed Méliès to add new material to the end of the trick, inventing the appearance and transformation of the skeleton prop and D'Alcy's return. The film, notable as Méliès's first known use of cinematic special effects, survives in film archives; a hand-colored version has also been reconstructed by a Méliès scholar. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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