The Temptation of St. Anthony
About The Temptation of St. Anthony
Saint Anthony is praying in a cave when young women appear and he sends them away. He kisses a skull and it turns into a woman. The others circle him and vanish. He kneels before a crucifix, and the figure of Jesus becomes a woman. An angel appears and puts the cave back as it was.
Cast & crew
More about The Temptation of St. Anthony
Georges Méliès made it in 1898 as Star Film number 169. He plays Saint Anthony. Jehanne d'Alcy plays one of the three temptresses. The earliest English listing calls it Temptation of Saint Anthony, without 'The.' A print survives. It runs about one minute and ten seconds.
Themes
Background
The short sits next to the Dreyfus series of the same months, when Méliès was using the camera for argument as well as for tricks.
Making
Méliès plays the saint himself and uses the stop-substitution he was already selling as the whole point of a Star Film trick subject.
Technique
Stop-substitution changes the skull and the crucifix into women and brings the angel in at the end.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
A print survives.
Notes
- It is one of two Méliès films built on a religious subject. The other is The Devil in a Convent, released the next year. Both take an anti-clerical turn.
- The cave cloth is an early version of the grotto sets Méliès used later.
- He made it in the same season as his Dreyfus Affair series.
- Substitution tricks turn the skull and the crucifix into women.
Scenes
- The skull Anthony kisses turns into a woman.
- The figure on the cross becomes one of the temptresses, until an angel restores the cave.
