The Witch
About The Witch
Lothaire, a penniless troubadour and the last of a line of knights, asks the witch Carabosse what is coming. She shows him a damsel locked away so her father can steal the inheritance, and she sells him an enchanted four-leaf clover, which he pays for with a bag of sand. She comes after him on a broomstick with a fire-spitting poignard, through fallen rocks, a field of druid stones, a cemetery of ghosts, and the beasts at the damsel's castle. A druid priest arms him with mistletoe and a crusader's sword; he breaks the dungeon open and they flee. The druid strikes Carabosse into a lake with her own broom, turns the poignard on her gnome, and blesses the couple.
Cast & crew
More about The Witch
Star Film numbers 877–887. The catalogue sold it as a grande légende fantastique bretonne, about 820 feet (15 minutes), and the character names come from the American catalogue because the film has no intertitles.
Themes
Background
Department-store screenings at Dufayel put féeries in front of children as a supervised show next to the shopping floor.
Making
A mechanical snake-and-beast show and a broomstick flight were staged with scenery that rolled horizontally past the camera.
Technique
Horizontally moving scenery, pyrotechnics, and substitution splices carry the chase from the witch's den to the lake.
Preservation
A hand-colored nitrate print is at the Cinémathèque Française. David Shepard's restoration, with a score by Eric Beheim, was released on home video in 2008. A new digitization premiered at Il Cinema Ritrovato in August 2020.
Notes
- The French title is La Fée Carabosse ou le Poignard fatal.
- Carabosse comes from Madame d'Aulnoy's seventeenth-century tale The Princess Mayblossom. Méliès mixed her with Breton folklore, druids, ghosts, and beasts.
- The Grands Magasins Dufayel ordered a run of féeries to show children in a room beside the store while parents shopped. This film was projected there with sound effects, music, and a spoken commentary.
- It was sold in black and white and, at a higher price, hand-colored. A set of twelve publicity stills was sold separately.
- The advertisement speaks of 20 tableaux. The action as described runs through twelve.
- Georges Sadoul thought Méliès himself played Carabosse.
Scenes
- Lothaire pays Carabosse with a sand-filled purse and leaves with the clover.
- He climbs the castle wall with the crusader's sword in his teeth.
- The druid knocks the witch into the lake with her broomstick.
Influenced by
- Madame d'Aulnoy's fairy tale The Princess Mayblossom
- Breton folklore
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (La Fée Carabosse ou le Poignard fatal (Georges Méliès, 1906).webm)
