Le manoir du diable
About Le manoir du diable
A bat flies into a castle room and becomes the Devil. He draws a woman from a cauldron, then clears the room as two cavaliers enter. One runs. The other faces moving furniture and a skeleton, which becomes a bat and then the Devil again. Spectres pin him. The woman returns, turns into a crone, then into six crones. His friend jumps the balcony. The first man holds up a crucifix, and the Devil retreats.
Cast & crew
More about Le manoir du diable
Star Film numbers 78–80. Méliès shot the pantomime outdoors against painted scenery. The negative is about 60 meters. It was released at the end of 1896 or the start of 1897. In the United States it was called The Haunted Castle, and in Britain The Devil’s Castle.
Themes
Making
The castle is a flat in the garden. Transformations are stop-substitutions: the camera stops, the bat or the skeleton is swapped, and the camera starts.
Look
Georges Méliès photographed it in the garden, with the castle painted on the flat behind the actors.
Music
Silent. No composer is credited.
Preservation
Treated as lost until a junk-shop print in Christchurch was identified in 1985. In 1988 the New Zealand Film Archive recognized that copy.
Notes
- Jehanne d’Alcy plays the woman who steps from the cauldron.
- Georges Sadoul suggested the Devil was Jules-Eugène Legris, a magician from the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, rather than Méliès.
- Méliès returned to the idea in 1897 with Le Château hanté, also sold as The Haunted Castle. The two films are often mixed up.
- The only known print was bought in a Christchurch junk shop in the 1930s or 1940s and not identified until 1985.
- Writers have called the bat-to-man change the first vampire film, and the short the first horror film. Méliès staged it as a comic fantasy.
Scenes
- The bat circles the room and is suddenly the Devil.
- A woman rises out of the cauldron.
- The skeleton the cavalier strikes turns into a bat.
- He holds up a crucifix and the Devil retreats.
Influenced
- Le Château hanté (1897)
Also available
- Internet Archive (The_Haunted_Castle_1896)
- Wikimedia Commons (Le Manoir du Diable (1896) by Georges Méliès.webm)
