The Devil and the Statue
Le Diable géant ou le miracle de la madone, 1901, 2m03s
Star Film Catalogue Nos. 384-385
In a lavishly appointed room, a woman is serenaded by a man playing a lute while balanced on a ladder propped up just outside her window. After they clasp hands and gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes, he descends to the ground. She crosses the room, beside herself with emotion. A devil appears in the alcove, causes bars to appear on her window, taunts her, and then performs a suggestive dance, gradually growing in size until he towers above her. In desperation, the woman pleads to a statue of the Madonna, who comes to life and shrinks the devil back to his original size, causing him to disappear. She then banishes the bars, and the lovers are reunited.
The Devil and the Statue is a variation on a theme established by The Man with the Rubber Head (L’Homme à la tête en caoutchouc, 1901), in that once again the narrative is essentially an excuse for a living creature to appear to grow to gigantic size, by dint of superimposing a shot with the camera tracking in over a shot of a static room. (In this case, the joins are more obvious, and the floor on which the expanding and contracting devil is standing is all too visible).
Here, the effect is in the context of a love story, in which a courting couple is forcibly separated by the devil before being brought back together by a statue of the Madonna coming to life - a rather simpler effect than was the case in earlier Méliès films like The Magician (Le Magicien, 1898), as it only seems to involve the actress in question standing very still for most of the running time. However, it’s unlikely the audience would have been looking at her given the attractions of the increasingly imposing devil. Whereas the title character of The Man with the Rubber Head consisted entirely of a head, and therefore posed no threat, the newly gigantic devil is much more alarming.
However, despite the impressive build-up (in every sense), the dénouement can’t help but be a little disappointing, consisting largely of a reversal of the previous effect, at the end of which the devil simply fizzles out. Compared with the Grand Guignol head explosion of the previous film, one is entitled to feel a little short-changed, and for all the elegance of the set (the Renaissance Italian ambience is very effective), this is one of Méliès’ minor efforts.
The untinted print on Flicker Alley’s DVD opens with severe chemical damage, but quickly settles down to present an image that’s generally in very good condition, with plenty of fine detail visible (including, as mentioned above, the floor on which the devil is standing), only occasionally beset by tramlines. Joe Rinaudo’s electronic-organ accompaniment uses scales to create the impression of things growing and shrinking in size.
Links
- Internet Movie Database entry.
- Jshaide’s review (Rotten Tomatoes forum)
Posted on 5th July 2008
Under: Horror, Jump-Cuts, Camera Movement, Superimposition, Religion, 1901 | 3 Comments »
A bachelor visits a witch and asks her to find him a wife. She asks him for money, and he tosses her a small purse. She concocts a potion in her cauldron and sets fire to it. Once the flames die down, a beautiful woman emerges. The witch multiplies her into five women and asks the bachelor to choose. After carefully examining them, he picks the second and asks her to sit down on a stool. The witch then folds the other four women back into one, and makes her disappear in a puff of smoke. The bachelor begins to woo his chosen companion, but as he gets particularly ardent, she changes into the witch, who cackles with glee at the trick she has played on him. When the enraged bachelor tries to attack her, she transforms him into a donkey and mounts him, riding him around the cauldron to the accompaniment of regular beatings from her riding crop. 
The special effects are mostly very straightforward jump-cuts, though a combination of these and well-judged movement allows Méliès to create the impression that the various women are “unfolded” from each other, as though multiple cut-outs on a paper chain. The design of the witch’s lair includes many props familiar from earlier Méliès films, such as the outsized scissors from 
A businessman enters a hotel room and hangs his umbrella, coat and hat on the leftmost of a row of hooks. He then removes his jacket and waistcoat and places them on a nearby chair. As he removes his trousers, another coat and hat appear on his back and head. He removes these and places them on the hook next to his original coat and hat, but as he removes them, another hat appears on his head, and he is clad in a pair of check trousers. This process is repeated several times, with the businessman becoming increasingly agitated. When all the hooks are full, he starts flinging his clothes into the corner, the pile growing increasingly large. Finally, he jumps on the bed and pulls the covers over himself, only for the bed to vanish. He resumes undressing again, and discovers that he is now wearing multiple layers of clothing.
The frenzy continues right to the end of the film, even beyond what appears to be the climax (the vanishing of the bed at a crucial moment, a Méliès device now so familiar as to be somewhat predictable), as if to suggest that the poor man’s plight will continue indefinitely. The two earlier films mentioned above finished with the protagonists fleeing the room, though here (possibly exacerbated by the abrupt ending of the print under review) he seems doomed, Sisyphus-like, to try to undress for ever.
An explorer, clad in pith helmet, wanders into an Egyptian tomb and is struck by a sarcophagus displayed in the centre. After examining it from either side, he opens it, revealing it to be empty. He climbs in… (print ends here)
It’s a particular shame that so little of this film survives, because what’s presented on Flicker Alley’s DVD is generally in very acceptable condition, barring a couple of out-of-focus frames near the start. There are speckles of damage throughout, but the level of detail is impressively high, almost right up to the very end of the surviving fragment. Neal Kurz’s piano accompaniment is a Chopinesque waltz that comes to a conclusion as the explorer steps into the tomb - wisely, it refrains from building any kind of anticipation, given the inevitable letdown at the end.
In the kitchen, a cook attempts to seduce a maid, making her drop a plate. It shatters on the ground, causing both to jump and remonstrate with each other. The cook hears someone approaching and hides in a cupboard. The horrified manager enters and sends the maid off with a flea in her ear before sitting down to contemplate the shards. The cook peeks out of the cupboard, and the manager spots him. He runs over to the cupboard and slams the door, severing the cook’s head at the neck. In a panic, the manager picks up the head and puts it on a nearby table, where it comes back to life. Alarmed, the manager grabs a saucepan and hits it. It disappears and reappears on the other side of the kitchen. The manager picks it up and tosses it back in the cupboard, closing the door behind it. The now intact cook emerges from the cupboard, and knocks the manager’s head off before tossing his limp body around. He then exits via the door.
The English title is a simplification of the original French, as the term ‘gâte-sauce’ literally means “sauce spoiler”, a term that originally literally referred to a bad cook, but was then turned into a slang term meaning “kitchen help”. In other words, the “cook” in this film was probably a barely qualified underling, hence his clear preferment of the charms of the maid over anything else in the kitchen - and the rage of his boss when he hears his precious plates getting smashed as a by-product. 
In a prison cell, Colonel Joseph Henry paces up and down before sitting at the table to write a letter. He seals and addresses it, then walks over to the bed. Halfway there, he turns round and retrieves a cut-throat razor from a leather bag on the floor. He opens it, then puts it down on the table. After a brief hesitation, he picks it up again, walks over to the bed and slits his throat. He slumps against the bed and then falls on the floor, blood soaking through his shirt. A guard opens the door, sees the scene and summons two colleagues. They examine the body while the first guard finds the letter.
Both this film and its immediate successor, 
In a convent, a priest adjusts the position of some chairs before departing. As soon as he’s gone, the devil emerges from the font, and looks around. Spotting a rope dangling from the ceiling, he tugs on it, and a bell rings. He wraps his cloak around himself and turns into a priest. Seven white-clad nuns enter and kneel on the chairs as the priest/devil mounts the pulpit. He begins preaching, and the nuns cross themselves. He turns back into the devil, and they react with horror, fleeing the room as he laughs menacingly. He descends from the pulpit and makes the font and then the chairs disappear. He summons up demonic gargoyles to decorate the walls. He opens a trapdoor in the floor and two small children emerge. He conjures up a large pan, from which four other devils appear. A giant demonic cat-like head appears, from which three women emerge. The head turns into a gigantic toad, which the devil mounts while the others dance around him. A nun enters the room and holds up a crucifix. The devil reacts as though scalded, and the others vanish. He gets off the toad, which also vanishes. He confronts the nun, but cannot get past the crucifix. Three more nuns appear, each holding crucifixes, and they surround the devil. They then vanish, leaving the devil on the ground. He gets up, and is confronted by a guardsman. They fight, and the devil sends his opponent packing. Another man enters and chases the devil up to the pulpit. The devil jumps to the ground and vanishes. Bemused, the man descends from the pulpit, only to find the devil emerging from another trapdoor. The man tries to assail him, but the devil disappears down yet another trapdoor, immediately reappearing in the pulpit. A group of men and boys clad in white surplices enter. A statue of Saint Michel appears, and when the devil attempts to climb onto its plinth, the statue comes to life and throws him off. The devil disappears in a puff of smoke, while the men and boys file out.
As with The Astronomer’s Dream, the set design is most impressive. Although clearly consisting of two painted flats (so the nuns have a viable “corridor” to enter through), Méliès makes much use of foreshortened perspective to give a very real sense of depth, and he has a lot of fun with the devil decking out the walls with gargoyles: most vandalism isn’t nearly so aesthetically appealing. The giant feline head with its swivelling eyeballs and the equally grotesque toad from which the devil conducts his revellers are just as effective, though the fact that they’re also flat is emphasised by the final appearance of an equally fantastical but very three-dimensional Saint Michael. 
An astronomer is writing notes at his desk. A devil appears in a puff of smoke and taunts him, but the astronomer ignores him. A woman with a crescent-moon tiara appears and banishes the devil before disappearing herself. Oblivious to all this, the astronomer gets up and draws a geometrically precise globe on his blackboard, complete with a moon in the top left corner. The moon grows a face and hair and descends to join the globe, which sprouts arms and legs. Annoyed, the astronomer dashes the blackboard to the ground. He picks up a telescope and tries to look through it at the moon, but it turns into a rolling pin, which pokes him in the eye. He angrily tosses it aside and returns to his desk, placing his head in his hands. The desk vanishes, and he topples over onto the ground. He looks through his large telescope and sees a gigantic face in the moon, which promptly invades his study and swallows the telescope and one of the astronomer’s chairs. He tries to retrieve his property, but is rebuffed. The moon emits a puff of smoke, knocking the astronomer to the ground. He picks up a parasol to shield himself, but it is torn to shreds. Two small, identical children emerge from its mouth, and the astronomer promptly hurls them back in. He then tries to hit the moon with a broom, but it retreats to a point beyond the end of the astronomer’s balcony. The astronomer tries to throw a chair, his notebook and a table at the moon, but they all vanish at the crucial moment. Suddenly, the moon becomes a crescent, supporting a woman in a bridal veil. She descends onto the astronomer’s balcony and removes the veil. He tries to hug her, but she shoots up in the air. Another woman appears on the crescent. The astronomer gets up to greet her, and falls through a trapdoor into a room where he is confronted by a suit of armour. He hits this with a broom, and is transported inside the moon’s mouth. The moon swallows him whole and spits out various limbs. The devil reappears, followed in quick succession by the moon-goddess, who banishes him and stuffs the limbs back into the moon’s mouth. As she does so, the astronomer reappears in his chair, bit by bit. The astronomer wakes up in his observatory, heaves a sigh of relief that it was only a dream, and returns to his desk.
But the most significant advance made by the film is that it develops a more or less continuous narrative across three minutes, making it the clearest precursor yet to Méliès’ far more elaborate fantasies of the early 1900s. The astronomer’s dream runs the gamut from battles between devils and angels, being terrorised by a vast moon, and seduced by a female figure initially seen reclining on the crescent as though practising for the DreamWorks logo a century early.
A man enters the guestroom of an inn, clearly tired and ready for bed. He puts his suitcase, umbrella and overcoat down on the bed, whereupon they promptly vanish. He rummages through the bedclothes, but is none the wiser. He removes his hat and places it on a small cabinet. It springs up of its own accord and scuttles across the room. He tries to light a candle, but it vanishes, reappearing on the other side of the room. A second attempt leads to it reappearing in its original location. Finally, he lights the wick, but it explodes. He removes his jacket and it drifts up the wall of its own accord. He sits down in a chair, only for it to vanish at the crucial moment, leaving him sprawled on the floor, the chair reappearing on the other side of the room. Holding it firmly this time, he successfully sits down and removes his boots, which shuffle away. The bedside cabinet vanishes, and his trousers climb the wall. Now too tired to care, he gets into bed, only for it to vanish, leaving him on the floor. He gets up, and the bed reappears, shortly followed by the rest of the furniture, stacked neatly on top of the mattress. The man can stand it no longer, and flees the room.
Although the film mostly consists of random inconveniences, there’s a sense of building towards a climax at the end, when the entire bed vanishes, only to reappear with the rest of the furniture stacked on top of it. The traveller is probably wise to flee: as Méliès had already demonstrated in such films as 
A man defies warnings from his friend and prepares to spend the light in a haunted castle. He sits nonchalantly down in a chair - which vanishes and reappears on the other side of the room, causing him to fall to the ground. He gets up, looks around indignantly, walks over to the chair, reaches out to move it back, but is alarmed by the sudden appearance of a mysterious apparition clad in white robes and cowl and holding a box. Drawing a sword, the man runs him through, only to find the apparition turning into a skeleton. He shakes the skeleton and it turns into a burly guard clad in armour. He vanishes, and another man appears behind the central character, pointing out the reappearance of the white-cowled apparition. (The film ends abruptly here)
The final transformation to a burly guard is well handled, but after he disappears the film becomes incomprehensible, presumably thanks to a missing ending. Another man appears - he is not the colleague from the start, though he doesn’t seem to possess supernatural trappings - and points out the re-emergence of the cowled figure, but the film then ends just as Méliès seems about to explore similar variations to those that concluded A Nightmare.