A Beautiful Tribute to Georges Méliès

Rating: 10/10 (26 November 2013)

This movie has the look and feel of a wonderful fairytale about an orphaned boy who secretly lives in hidden quarters at Montparnasse Railway Station in Paris at some time shortly after the end of World War I. Here, he sets the station's clocks--a job that his drunken uncle is supposed to be performing.
However, what is a fairytale on the surface actually contains quite a bit of non-fiction, specifically in regard to the great film innovator Georges Méliès. This review will not give too much away about the factual content revealed about Méliès, but the reviewer finds it an ingenious intermingling of fantasy and fact. Therefore, it works on two levels: as beautifully rendered myth about the boy and the various characters he meets at the station, and as a short history lesson about one of the great pioneers of the cinema's earliest years.