page_title: Georges Méliès
section_title: Later film career and decline
hierarchical_section_title: Georges Méliès / Later film career and decline
caption_attribution_description: English: Georges Méliès (far left) in his original Star-Film studio in MontreuilFrançais&#160;: Georges Méliès dans son studio de production "Star Film" à Montreuil (France)
context_page_description: Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French illusionist and film director who led many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. Méliès was well-known for the use of special effects, popularizing such techniques as substitution splices, multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted colour. He was also one of the first filmmakers to use storyboards. His films include A Trip to the Moon and The Impossible Voyage, both involving strange, surreal journeys somewhat in the style of Jules Verne, and are considered among the most important early science fiction films, though their approach is closer to fantasy.
context_section_description: In 1907, Méliès created three new illusions for the stage and performed them at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, while he continued producing a steady stream of films, including Under the Seas, and a short version of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Yet such film critics as Jean Mitry, Georges Sadoul, and others have declared that Méliès' work began to decline and, in the film scholar Miriam Rosen's words, to "lapse into the repetition of old formulas on the one hand and an uneasy imitation of new trends on the other."
  In 1908, Thomas Edison created the Motion Picture Patents Company as a way to control the film industry in the United States and Europe. The companies that joined the conglomerate were Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Essanay, Selig, Lubin, Kalem, American Pathé and Méliès' Star Film Company, with Edison acting as president of the collective. Star Films was obligated to supply the MPPC with one thousand feet of film per week, and Méliès made fifty eight films that year in fulfillment of the obligation. Gaston Méliès established his own studio in Chicago, the Méliès Manufacturing Company, which helped his brother fulfill the obligation to Edison, although Gaston produced no films in 1908. That year, Méliès made one of his most ambitious films: Humanity Through the Ages. This pessimistic film retells the history of humans from Cain and Abel to the Hague Peace Conference of 1907. The film was unsuccessful, yet Méliès was proud of it throughout his life.
  Early in 1909, Méliès presided over the "Congrès International des éditeurs de films" in Paris. 
  Under Méliès’ chairmanship, the european congress took place from 2 to 4 February 1909. In his mémoires Méliès says that this congress was the second one,  following the 1908 congress. But in 1909, the congress made important decisions regarding the films’leasing and adoption of a single type of film perforation, as to thwart Edison and the MPPC. Like others, Méliès was unhappy with the monopoly that Edison had created and wanted to fight back. The members of that congress agreed no longer to sell films, but rather to lease them for four-month periods, only to members of their own organization, and to adopt a standardized film perforation count on all films.  Méliès was unhappy about the second of the three conditions, because his principal clients were owners of fairgrounds and music halls.  A fairground trade journal quoted Méliès as saying, "I am not a corporation;  I am an independent producer."
  Méliès resumed filmmaking in the autumn of 1909 and produced nine films, including Whimsical Illusions, in which he presents a magical effect on stage. At the same time, Gaston Méliès had moved the Méliès Manufacturing Company to Fort Lee, New Jersey. In 1910, Gaston established   the Star Film Ranch, a studio in San Antonio, Texas, where he began to produce Westerns. By 1911, Gaston had renamed his branch of Star Films American Wildwest Productions, and opened a studio in southern California. He produced over one hundred thirty films between 1910 and 1912, and he was the primary source for fulfilling Star Films' obligation to Thomas Edison's company. Between 1910 and 1912, Georges Méliès produced very few films.
  In 1910, Méliès temporarily stopped making films as
  he prefers to create a big magic show Les Fantômes du Nil, and go on a  very expansive tour in Europe and North Africa. Later that year, Star Films signed an agreement with the Gaumont Film Company to distribute all of its films. But in the autumn of 1910, Méliès made a deal with Charles Pathé that would eventually destroy his own film career.  Méliès accepted a large amount of money to produce films and in exchange Pathé Frères would distribute and reserve the right to edit these films.  Pathé also held the deed to both Méliès' home and his Montreuil studio as part of the deal.  Méliès immediately began production on more elaborate films and the two that he produced in 1911 were Baron Munchausen's Dream and The Diabolical Church Window. Despite the extravagance of these féeries that had been extremely popular just a decade before
caption: Méliès at his studio in Montreuil
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