- Costa-Gavras: Méliès is an extraordinary character. He is the filmmaker who invented every possible imaginary trick, he started it all. Everything we've done since he had already done, we're only repeating it.
- [first lines]
- Narrator: In 1923, Georges Méliès, cinema's first magician, inventor of the first ever special effects, destroyed all his work in a fit of desperation. The original negatives of the 520 films he directed between 1896 and 1913, went up in flames. Were the dreams, the enchanting visions, the masterpieces really lost forever? Maybe not. One hundred years later, Méliès the magician is to perform a final magic trick and will reappear eternally youthful. But, this is another one of your tricks, isn't it Monsieur Méliès?
- Laurent Mannoni: Méliès is deeply rooted in the 19th century, especially in the end of the 19th century, the century of great theatrical fairytales, of magic shows. He was a real enthusiast for these two genres at that time. He really took part in this momentum, because the Méliès genre is soaked up in the fairytales he had seen during his childhood at the Châtelet of the Gaîté theaters.
- Michel Gondry: There is something joyful and inventive about him, and a great creativity of course, and some elements from his work are considered modern today.
- Costa-Gavras: All his films are joyous. We can even analyze the audience at the time, and what they liked in Méliès's films. Psychologically and socially we can explain the audience's reaction to the gags, the stories; because, they love his stories, Méliès had a huge success.
- Self - Subject: It was a simply a camera freeze that occurred while I was fixing the cars on Opéra square. Suddenly the camera stopped. By the time we fixed it, the cars placements had changed and I was surprised during the editing to suddenly see, instead of a Madeleine-Bastille omnibus, a hearse and the whole family that followed.
- Narrator: The first cinema special affect was born. Méliès would use it and abuse it, for years to come.
- Self - Subject: The first contact between me and Mr. Lumière happened as a result of fortuitous circumstances. I ran into him on the stairs of the theater I managed, the Robert Houdin theater. Since he knew me by sight, he told me, "Say Mr. Méliès, since you are in the habit, during your shows, of surprising the audience, I would love to invite you to com to the Grand Café." "Why?", I answered. "Because you will see something that might surprise you." When I saw his camera, projecting still photographs, a the beginning, I said, "You bothered me for projections? I've been doing them for 20 years. Nothing extraordinary about them." Then, suddenly, I saw the character moving, coming towards us. A few minutes later, a train launched, it almost went through the screen, straight into the audience. We were all, I must say, absolutely astounded. I immediately thought, that's my business, an extraordinary thing.
- Laurent Mannoni: He doesn't stand out through his special effects or his technique; but, through his imagination. That seemed endless and always alert, and always in action. That's what makes him wonderful.
- Costa-Gavras: The moon was everybody's romantic dream. It was a fantastic idea. Obviously, it became the biggest cinema best-seller of its time.
- Self - Subject: My first studio was a big and long room of 33 feet by 20 feet, made entirely of glass. It was not set up at all, a the time, nothing like what I did later on. Later, I built stage machinery, above and below it, in order to create great fairytales, just as I created great shows.
- Laurent Mannoni: To understand Méliès, we must understand that he spoke to two audiences. First, his own, at the Robert Houdin theater; but, the majority of his production was reserved to stallholders. At the time, people watched films in tent with very specific screening conditions. The usher rallied the masses, there was a barker and music, and the sound of generators, there was a sound universe, olfactory even, that were incredible. Today, we can't seem to grasp it, it's a lost secret. This played out in Méliès's films' success. The stallholders found the right combination to make these films extraordinarily attractive.
- Michel Gondry: There is obviously a great creativity, but there's also an unyielding logic in it. He had technical constraints, since he was filming in a small space, so he created depth with perspective and backgrounds, and imagination completed the rest, in order to reach some sort of realism.
- Béatrice de Pastre: Unlike the magic shows where he could delegate the stage direction once he had set the frame, in movies, he was the inventor, he was in charge of the studio. So, he absolutely had to be present behind and in front of the camera, and during the entire creation process.
- Narrator: With, "The Dreyfus Affair," the first ever political film, Méliès revealed new possibilities for the brand new cinema industry. The Star Film Company had now taken on all genres: advertisements, dramas, comedies, even historical reenactments. But, the verdict of audiences was clear. They preferred extravaganzas. Trick films. Films with lavish and ingenious visual effects. In other words: the Méliès genre.
- Costa-Gavras: The French Cinematheque always set the tone. And other cinematheques always imitated it. Because Langlois had the extraordinary sense to say, "Let's preserve the films," as they did in England, "But, let's also show them." Films are made to be shown, thus we show them. Langlois, at the Cinematheque, had already worked a lot on Méliès. He had saved and gathered a lot of things at the Cinematheque.
- Costa-Gavras: I saw it as some sort of suicide. As his way of killing himself through his work, and his way of really protesting. There are great artists who have burnt their work. Who burnt paintings, et cetera. But this is inexplicable.
- Costa-Gavras: When Méliès became outdated, he did tricks, he did theater, amusing things. But cinema was going into a serious era. We started talking about society. Despite the "Dreyfus Affair," he wasn't able to to do what others, especially Americans, were doing. They did very important things. He did not really get it. He couldn't step out of the theater as others did.
- Béatrice de Pastre: Over the years, different organizations would take interest in this work. And slowly, over the course of 40 or 50 years, prints stored at private collectors' started to reappear. And that's how we started to find elements from Méliès's films.
- Narrator: Could Méliès have been the first filmmaker to shoot a film in 3-D? As early as 1903? Who knows?
- Randy Haberkamp: Gaston Méliès thought that by joining in on Edison's patent companies, that he would be licensed and it would enable him to distribute Geroges's films coming in from Paris and being imported. Unfortunately, Edison realized that those films were very popular and profitable and, so, he basically said to Gaston, "I'm sorry, you can make your own films, but, you can't distribute these films because they violate US patent." It meant that Georges Méliès's negatives were no longer of value; because, he couldn't do anything with them. So, suddenly, these really wonderful films were basically old news and, basically, considered scrap.
- Laurent Mannoni: Méliès was, of course, the first to think about using two cameras, in order to get two negatives. Anyway, the idea was picked up in France, in the USA, and all around. It is amazing to think that the cameras he used, especially in 1902, to direct more sophisticated films, were pretty archaic cameras. In spite of that, he would get miraculously precise special effects.
- [last lines]
- Randy Haberkamp: Film history teaches us where we've gone before and where we can go even further with our dreams. Because, it's the dream machine, right?
- Laurent Mannoni: There was a patent war at one point in the USA. Thomas Edison applied, very early on, in 1891, for patents for the kinetoscope, but also for perforated 35 mm film. Therefore, he could demand a number of things from people who produced film, since he claimed to have invented it. So he decided to create a corporation in 1908, that he called the MPPC, The Motion Pictures Patent Corporation, that would gather different editors. At that point, Gaston Méliès, then in the United States, felt like it was imperative that they were part of in order for Georges's interests to be represented in America.
- Narrator: In the end, his final screen appearance, was in a simple cigarette advertisement. One last film, one last trick, and Méliès died, on a gloomy day, of January 1938.