Les Métamorphoses de Satan
About Les Métamorphoses de Satan
Two bearded sages argue in front of a large cauldron and call up Mephistopheles. Further substitutions follow. The Gaumont catalogue describes the film as a transformation in three tableaux of the damnation of Faust.
Cast & crew
More about Les Métamorphoses de Satan
Georges Hatot and Gaston Breteau made it for Gaumont in 1898. It sits in the Series C section of the Gaumont catalogue, with films from their 1898–99 work, and is not usually claimed for Alice Guy. The sets are credited to the Paris theatre La Fantaisie nouvelle and match the Marcel Jambon scenery Hatot had used the year before for the Lumière film Faust: métamorphose de Faust et apparition de Marguerite. Breteau, who stars, is taken to be Mephistopheles. Hatot, then 21 or 22, was due for military service, so Breteau is thought to have directed much of their Gaumont output in practice.
Themes
Technique
Substitution tricks in three tableaux, on scenery carried over from Hatot's 1897 Lumière Faust.
Notes
- A later identification of the picture as Alice Guy's Faust et Méphistophélès (1903) does not match Guy's catalogue note, which describes a fairy tale and not a trick film.
- The Gaumont line is: transformation in three tableaux representing the damnation of Faust.
Scenes
- The sages raise Mephistopheles out of the cauldron.
Influenced by
- Faust: métamorphose de Faust et apparition de Marguerite (Lumière, 1897)
- Georges Méliès trick films
