The Magic Book
Le Livre magique, 1900, 2m39s
Star Film Catalogue Nos. 289-291
A man enters a room, in the middle of which is a large stand - onto which he places a gigantic book, bilingually titled ‘Le Livre magique’/'The Magical Book’. He opens it to the first page, which features a picture of Mr Punch. Taking him by the hand, he pulls Mr Punch out of the book and into the room. He turns the page, to reveal a double portrait of Harlequin and Pierrot, pulls them into the room in a similar fashion, and then turns the page again to reveal pictures of a young woman and her father. This time, he only pulls the young woman into the room: she curtsies and performs a little dance. This attracts the attention of the book’s other characters, who surround her. Annoyed, the man pulls her father out of the book, and he waves his stick at his daughter’s suitors. The two men join forces and push Punch back into the book, followed by Harlequin, but Pierrot hides behind the book. Meanwhile, the man has pushed the young woman and her father back into the book. He finds Pierrot, grabs him by the ear and tries to force him back into the book, closing the covers. But Pierrot has yet to be absorbed back into the pages, pushes the book open again, jumping back into the room. The man forces him back into the book through the front cover, successfully, but the book then falls on top of him, flattening him completely. He then re-enters the room through the door, and bows, before picking up the book, tucking it under his arm, and leaving.
A delightful conceit that’s developed into an almost perfectly structured sketch, The Magic Book is based on a very simple idea (the characters in a book come to life when its owner thrusts his hand into the pages and drags them out), but it’s presented with more than enough visual and conceptual wit to hold attention. The characters themselves are familiar archetypes: Mr Punch, Harlequin and Pierrot (the latter costume has already seen service in 1896’s A Nightmare/Le Cauchemar and 1898’s The Magician/Le Magicien), and the chances are that the (apparent) father-daughter duo on the book’s final pages would have been equally recognisable to Méliès’ original audience.
The film has a classical three-act structure. In the first, the characters are extracted from the book, in the second, their interaction causes various complications, and in the third, they are (eventually) returned from whence they came. The second act is the most immediately engaging, as it deftly sketches a reasonably involved scenario in the space of a few seconds. The book’s owner has, up to now, been extracting all the characters, but when he comes across the double portrait of the young woman and her father, he deliberately only picks the former, as he clearly has romantic designs on her and would prefer to express these without the danger of a chaperone being present.
However, when it becomes equally clear that Punch, Harlequin and Pierrot feel the same way, the man cynically extracts the father too, knowing that he can count on his support both when it comes to stick-waving moral outrage and for assistance in shoving the various characters back from whence they came. The third act also involves a bit of business with Pierrot, who successfully evades this reinstatement at first, though it’s disappointing that Méliès’ invention flags somewhat at the very end: the visual coup of the book falling off the stand and apparently crushing the man isn’t developed at all, and he merely reappears through the door to take a bow.
There are two points of interest about the book itself: firstly, its title (which is also the title of the film) is bilingual in French and English, showing that Méliès was clearly interested in distributing the film in English-speaking territories. Secondly, related to this, is the fact that his signature accompanies the various drawings. As with the written reference to his theatre in Between Calais and Dover (Entre Calais et Douvres, 1897), this is almost certainly Méliès’ attempt to assert his copyright and prevent piracy by contriving an excuse for the author’s name to appear on screen as often as possible.
The untinted print on Flicker Alley’s DVD begins with some severe chemical damage, but settles down to something quite watchable, albeit marred by numerous faint tramlines throughout. Frederick Hodges’ piano accompaniment makes witty and highly apposite use of Debussy’s twelfth prelude, ‘Minstrels’.
Links
- Internet Movie Database entry.
- Jshaide’s review (Rotten Tomatoes forum)
- Paghat the Ratgirl’s review (Weird Wild Realm)