Le Mélomane (1903) - film review

An eccentric conductor leads a chorus of women to row of telegraph poles supporting five wires.  The conductor starts throwing musical symbols onto the wires and creates six notes by pulling off his head six times and throwing it on the improvised stave.  Having composed his piece of music, the conductor leads the chorus and a drummer.  Their work done, the musical troupe marches away.

In this hilarious short film, Georges Méliès shows his talent both as a lithe comic performer and as a master of the cinematic art of his day.  Méliès uses the technique of multiple exposure (which he invented and used repeatedly in his films) almost to its limit – exposing the film no less than seven times to allow himself to appear seven times in the same frame.    This is accompanied by an extraordinary amount of trick splicing (another of the filmmaker’s much-used devices), allowing Méliès to create some bizarre illusions (such as repeatedly pulling off his head).   Only a genius of Méliès’ standing could have conceived such a mad film and have realised it with such technical and artistic brilliance.

© James Travers 2003

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