The Oracle of Delphi
About The Oracle of Delphi
Two priests set an ornate box inside a temple and lock the doors. A thief, played by Georges Méliès, breaks in and takes it. A bearded figure appears, takes the box back, and wakes the two sphinxes at the doors. They become women, set on the thief, and turn his head into a donkey's. The sphinxes go back to stone. The bearded man vanishes. The thief is left on the ground.
Cast & crew
More about The Oracle of Delphi
Méliès directed the trick film. Star Film numbered it 476. The setting in the action is a temple with sphinxes, played as ancient Egypt rather than the Greek site in the title. The length is given as 30 meters, about 100 feet. Effects are substitution splices and dissolving multiple exposures. Méliès shot two negatives at once, one for France and one for export, with a two-lens camera. A listed duration is 2 minutes.
Themes
Making
The donkey head and the sphinxes that step out of stone are splice tricks. The second negative, meant for export, later became the other eye of the Lobster 3D reconstruction.
Look
Méliès used substitution splices, dissolves, and a two-lens camera so two negatives could be made at once.
Technique
A twin-lens negative, later combined by Lobster Films into a 3D print.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
Two negatives survive, one made for domestic release and one for export. Lobster Films combined them as a 3D version shown in 2010 and 2011.
Notes
- The French title is L'Oracle de Delphes.
- Méliès is the thief, not the oracle.
- The two-lens camera let him print a domestic negative and a foreign negative from the same action.
- In the 2000s Lobster Films paired the two prints as a 3D version.
- That 3D cut was shown at the Cinémathèque française in 2010 and at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2011.
Scenes
- The sphinxes become women and turn the thief's head into a donkey's.
- They freeze back into statues and the bearded figure is gone.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (L'Oracle de Delphes (1903).webm)
