The Enchanted Well
About The Enchanted Well
A witch asks for a handout and is refused. She curses the town’s well. Georges Méliès plays the farmer with the donkey. The French title is Le Puits fantastique. Star Film numbered it 462–464.
Cast & crew
More about The Enchanted Well
Méliès directed the trick film. Wikipedia times it at 4 minutes. Effects use stage machinery, pyrotechnics, substitution splices, and dissolves on a black ground. A dragon puppet from this film was used again in The Witch (1906) and Baron Munchausen’s Dream (1911).
Themes
Making
Méliès puts himself in as the farmer with the donkey and builds the curse out of a dragon puppet, flashes, and splices rather than a long story.
Technique
The curse is stage machinery, pyrotechnics, substitution splices, and dissolves shot against black.
Preservation
The film survives. A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- The well is the village meeting place, and the witch is the beggar who tests it.
- Wikipedia’s reading is that the witch is the sympathetic figure and the greedy landowner is the one punished.
- The actors do comic acrobatics through the curse.
- A Commons file uses the French title.
Scenes
- The witch is turned away and curses the well.
- Méliès, as the farmer, is caught in the result with his donkey.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Le Puits fantastique (1903).webm)
