The Magic Book

A magician (Méliès) hauls a book the size of a man onto a bench, turns the pages, and substitution-splices the drawings into living Commedia figures: Pulcinella, Harlequin, Pierrot, Columbine, Pantalone. He then has to get them back in. Pierrot refuses. Star Film 289-291, about three minutes, shot in the glass studio at Montreuil, the pages signed G. Méliès in the lower corner. It is a trick film that is also an argument about what cinema is: a book whose illustrations will not stay put. The stubborn Pierrot is the point: the image, once given life, does not take direction.