The Magic of Méliès and Scorsese

Rating: 9/10 (22 August 2013)

My knowledge of motion pictures is strongest in respect to the earliest silent films, as anyone who looks at the list of the titles I've reviewed for IMDb can tell. This includes over 50 of the more remarkable 199 films of Georges Méliès available on the DVDs from Flicker Alley. Thusly, I greatly appreciate the attention this recent mainstream movie, as well as the graphic novel it's based on, has brought to the early cinema pioneer. Although it presents plenty of historical inaccuracies, this is to be expected in a fictionalization of a historical person, and it's nonetheless commendable how much "Hugo" gets right and how felicitous the movie's style and tone are to the spirit of Méliès's own films. And it's all the more commendable considering that this is an atypical picture for Martin Scorsese, although he's well known for his appreciation of film history and work in film preservation. This shines through Hugo's best scenes of flashbacks of Méliès making his movies in his glass-ceiling studio in Montreuil and a passionate plea for film preservation during the climactic celebration of his career and screening of his films.
That "Hugo" is a family-oriented picture is appropriate given that Méliès's féeries (fairy films) and fantasy adventures were among the first films ever made largely for an audience of children, although as with "Hugo", people of all ages, of course, may enjoy them. Méliès also introduced and exploited "special effects", which in his day mostly consisted of substitution splicing (stopping and resuming filming, touched up by editing, for transformations, appearances and disappearances of characters and scenery) and superimpositions (also known as multiple-exposure photography or matte shots). "Hugo", likewise, exploits today's tricks of computer generated imagery (CGI) and 3D digital photography. Additionally, although "Hugo" isn't hand colored the way Méliès's films were offered to be, its digital color grading scheme imitates the early Autochrome color photography process invented by the Lumière brothers--the same guys most often credited with inventing cinema. Although I can't speak personally to the 3D since I've only seen it in 2D, it seems to be almost universally praised as some of the best work done in the field. Reportedly, it's the first movie ever photographed entirely by 3D cameras, whereas earlier 3D movies have all had 3D conversion done in some part in post production. James Cameron said it's the best 3D photography he's seen, and he should know since he's the director of "Avatar" (2009) and is the biggest pusher of the technology.
Critics have also praised or panned the supposed leisurely pace of "Hugo". Compared to Méliès's films, however, the pace is frenetic. "Hugo" and most movies since the adoption of the classical style in the late 1910s are composed of shots lasting an average of a few seconds, whereas Méliès would often leave a shot-scene on screen for minutes, and for whom continuity editing was largely ignored in favor of theatrical imitation. Thankfully, the makers of "Hugo" don't try to faithfully replicate that theatricality; instead, it begins with swooping camera vistas and tracking shots that truly can go anywhere via CGI. The quick interpolation of clips from Méliès's films in "Hugo", however, may give an impression counter to the actual slow pacing of his tableaux.
The narrative follows a boy's "adventure" of discovering Méliès, and I'm sure for many viewers "Hugo" is their own introduction to the cinema magician. That may be the case for some popular critics, too, as it seems they mention the historical inaccuracies of the fictional story as though they were facts from Méliès's real life. For instance, while it's true that the Lumière brothers refused to sell Méliès a camera, it's not true that Méliès's introduction to cinema was from accidentally walking into a fairground screening. In fact, he was at the Lumière brothers' first public exhibition of the Cinématographe at the Grand Café in Paris on 28 December 1895. And the end of Méliès's filmmaking career happened before and had nothing to do with WWI, although the prevalent view is that his style did fall out of public favor (as well as because his non-business, artisan ethic was no match for the monopolistic practices of his competitors). This isn't so much a criticism of "Hugo", however, as it's a criticism of anyone who takes their facts from a movie. For more on the history as it relates to "Hugo" and "The Artist", see Fiona Pleasance's blog article "Yesterday's Men" and for that and other interesting observations on the movie read "Hugo: Scorsese's birthday present to Georges Méliès" by film historian and theorist Kristin Thompson.
Regardless, for replicating Méliès's Montreuil dream factory, "Hugo" is a history lesson that has come entertainingly to life. Not even some otherwise fine documentaries, such as "La magie Méliès" (1997), do as well at capturing the process and wonder of the film pioneer at work. Given that early histories dismissed the importance of editing in Méliès creating his trick effects, it's great to see its central role in the flashback sequence here. I also liked other details that "Hugo" recreated, including how Méliès had two cameras shooting at once--one print for the domestic European market and another for the American. And Ben Kingsley very much looks and, indeed, embodies the part. Various silent films of others are referenced in "Hugo", too, including a visit to a cinema where movie posters are seen and the children see Harold Lloyd's comedy "Safety Last!" (1923), which is imitated later in a key scene in the outer narrative. 2011 was a good year for fans of classic movies and for those who enjoy movies about movies, with the releases of "The Artist", "My Week with Marilyn" and "Hugo".