Melies continued his pursuits by attending lessons given by Emile Voisin, who owned a magician’s shop in the Rue Vielle-du-Temple.

Initially, he worked at a shoe shop after making use of his father’s connections, and later at a Regents Street clothing outfitters.ĭuring the evenings, he would visit the many theatrical venues in London, particularly the visual-fantasy productions that included Maskelyne and Cooke, billed as “Royal Illusionists” at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly.ĭespite wishes to pursue his dreams on his return to France, Melies was forced to join his family’s shoe business.

Melies was enrolled into military service, and upon leaving the army in 1884, he was sent to London to learn English. Proud to announce our latest production, the first VR/360 #GoogleDoodle! Celebrating pioneering filmmaker #GeorgesMéliès, ‘Back to the Moon’ was directed by and Doodle’s Hélène Leroux with our friends at #GoogleSpotlightStories #BacktotheMoon /83QWtT1rPk

He was 11 when his passion for the stage was fuelled by his first visit to the theatre it was the first time he saw the famous magician Robert-Houdin perform.

His teachers found his exercise books with portraits and caricatures of his teachers and classmates.īy the time he was 10 years old, Melies was busily constructing cardboard sets for his marionette shows that he would enthusiastically perform before an audience. He was described as an average pupil, who was passionate about sketching. He continued at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand. Melies attended the Lycee Imperial at Vanves near Paris, but his education was interrupted when his school was bombed during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870.He was the son of Jean-Louis-Stanislas Melies and his Dutch wife, Johannah-Catherine Melies, who were owners of three shoemaking factories in the city. Melies was born at 29 Boulevard Saint-Martin, Paris on December 8, 1861.In its honour, Google changed its logo to its first VR and 360-degree interactive Doodle to commemorate the anniversary of his silent film which was released on May 3, 1912. Méliès frequently used automata in both his stage performances and film, and it seems likely that the striking images he produced inspired the French automata makers to an equal degree.Described as “the father of special effects” and hailed for his pioneering visual techniques, Georges Melies, the French illusionist and film director, released on this day more than a hundred years ago what is considered his greatest masterpiece: The Conquest of the Pole. La Voyage dans la Lune cost its maker around 10,000F - a large sum in the early days of cinema - principally due to the cost of the machinery and the cardboard and cloth used to create the scenery. Houdin himself was renowned for combining magic, horology and automata, and Méliès' association with Houdin gives us a clue to his own fascination with the subject. Another famous act with a counterpoint in the world of automata was Les Farces de la Lune (at the Theatre Robert Houdin) in 1891, Méliès' interpretation of a favourite image, the girl reclining on the tip of a crescent moon. One of his early theatrical personae was Mephisto (immortalised in La Manoir du Diable) - perhaps the inspiration for Lambert's Mephistopheles automaton. His early films formed part of music hall performances, which also included magic and automata as stage props. He was one of the first commercially successful film-makers and important for the way he introduced the concept of cinema as public entertainment. With one eye shut and the tongue sticking out, this automaton bears a strong similarity to the image from the film and recalls French fascination with the moon at the end of the 19th Century.Ī pioneer of early cinema, Méliès made his own camera from a Robert Paul projector after the Lumière brothers reputedly refused to sell him their Cinématographe in 1896. In 1902 George Méliès produced his film Le Voyage dans la Lune, which introduced the famous image of the face of the full moon hit in the eye by an explorers' rocket.

George melies automata