The Famous Box Trick
About The Famous Box Trick
A stage magician, Georges Méliès, produces a dove and shuts it in a box with a set of clothes. A boy climbs out. An axe splits him into two boys, who start to fight. One becomes a paper tissue, which Méliès tears up; the other goes back in the box. A hammer smashes the box to show it empty. The boy returns, turns into flags, and Méliès vanishes in smoke, then walks back through a door to bow. The French title is Illusions fantasmagoriques. Star Film number 155. It runs about 70 seconds.
Cast & crew
More about The Famous Box Trick
Méliès directed, wrote, and played the magician for Star Film in 1898. The British Film Institute holds a print. Substitutions—the stop and the restart—make the dove, the doubled boy, the tissue, the flags, and the puff of smoke.
Themes
Making
Each change is a splice: the camera stops, the prop or the extra boy is set, and the camera starts. The hammer on the box is there so the audience can see the container is ordinary wood.
Look
Méliès photographs his own stage against a painted set. The joins are hidden in the stops, not in a moving camera.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
A print is held by the British Film Institute.
Notes
- Star Film catalog number 155.
- The axe trick is the one the English title points at: one boy becomes two.
- The bow at the end is Méliès walking back in through a practical door after the smoke jump.
- The BFI print is the surviving copy named in the filmography.
Scenes
- A dove and a suit of clothes go into the box, and a boy comes out.
- The axe makes a second boy, and the two quarrel.
- One boy is shredded as tissue; the box is hammered open and found empty.
- Flags replace the boy, smoke replaces Méliès, and he re-enters to bow.
Also available
- British Film Institute
- Wikimedia Commons (Illusions fantasmagoriques (1898).webm)
