Georges Méliès Critical Essay | Critical Essay by André Gaudreault

Critical Essay by André Gaudreault

SOURCE: "Theatricality, Narrativity, and Trickality: Reevaluating the Cinema of Georges Méliès," in Journal of Popular Film and Television, Vol. 15, No. 3, Fall, 1987, pp. 111-19.

In the following excerpt, Gaudreault describes the narrative qualities in the service of films that do not adhere to traditional storytelling in Méliès's films.

I can assert that the scenario so executed was of no importance whatsoever. . . .

Georges Méliès

So much for the scenario which, as I have already said, is the main element, the starting point of the negative. . . .

Charles Pathé

The recent reevaluation of early cinema (typified by such writers as Noël Burch and the historians who contributed to the 1978 FIAF Brighton Project) bases itself on an opposition to a previous teleological concept of film history. The first generation of film historians (such as Lewis Jacobs in the United States and Georges Sadoul in...
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