AllMovie

French filmmaker Georges Méliès might well be termed "the granddaddy of modern special effects." In the late 19th and very early 20th century, with the medium of cinema still fledgling and nascent, Méliès used crude technical means to pioneer such devices as time-lapse photography, fade-ins, fade-outs and multiple exposures - decades ahead of his time. As directed by Jacques Meny, the 1997 documentary The Magic of Méliès reflects on the extraordinary career of this often-forgotten craftsperson, via clips from the handful of his films that are still extant, an eye on the major events of the director's life, and detailed explanation of how he achieved the various effects.