SCFZ

Polling the films of Georges Melies

The rules:

- your list can include no more than half* of the Melies films you've seen, up to a maximum of 8. So if you've seen 6 films, you can vote for 3, and if you've seen 20, you can vote for up to 8.

* If you've seen an odd number, you can round up when deciding the length of your ballot -- e.g if you've seen 7, you can vote for 4, and if you've seen 15, you can vote for the maximum of 8.

- i'll assume ballots are ranked unless you tell me otherwise. unranked ballots are fine.

- deadline for ballots: next Tuesday, in seven days, whatever day that is

umbugbene created an index on letterboxd of all of our previous polls here: letterboxd.com/umbugbene/list/index-of-all-scfz-director-polls/

we didn't have a suggestion besides melies for our next poll, so we'll go with melies! because he was so prolific, and because titles of melies films are often translated differently, if there might be any chance of me confusing one title with another, please list the film's year so i can identify it easily!

The Devilish Tenant (1909)
The Impossible Voyage (1904)
The Astronomer's Dream (1898)
Le Monstre (1903)
Le Dirigible Fantastique (1906)
The Hilarious Posters (1906)
Le Papillon Fantastique (1909)
The Terrible Turkish Executioner (1904)

seen 45, hard to choose!

So the problem with Melies, for me, is that at some point I watched a bunch of them, but now have no recollection as to how many/which ones. I can definitively account for 4. But I know I've seen a lot more. I'll treat 4 as my baseline, and probably watch a few more to get the number up for this poll. Also, his grave is one of the most happening spots at Pere Lachaise cemetery. Even more than Jim Morrison last I was there.

Excelsior! Prince of Magicians (1901)
The Four Troublesome Heads (1898)

Yeah, def need to rewatch several ones before posting my list.

PHARMACEUTICAL HALLUCINATIONS
THE ECLIPSE: COURTSHIP OF THE SUN AND MOON
THE DREAM OF AN OPIUM FIEND
THE KINGDOM OF FAIRIES / LE ROYAUME DES FÉES
THE SPIDER AND THE BUTTERFLY / LE PAPILLON FANTASTIQUE
THE MERMAID *
THE TEMPTATION OF ST. ANTHONY
THE ALCHEMIST'S HALLUCINATION

PYGMALION AND GALATEA *
BARON MUNCHAUSEN'S DREAM *
IN THE BOGIE MAN'S CAVE
THE DAINAID'S BARREL / EIGHT GIRLS IN A BARREL *
THE IMPERCEPTIBLE TRANSMUTATIONS *
UNEXPECTED FIREWORKS *
THE WANDERING JEW *
A MYSTERIOUS PORTRAIT
ON THE ROOF *
THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL

marked with * i logged in the past few years.
the rest watched/rewatched for the poll.

not sure i can vote in this as even though i've seen 26, looking through his films i'm not sure they're that representative, and the ones i've not seen sound more intriguing mostly that the ones i've have, with the exception of:

bluebeard (1901)

which i love. so that's muh one vote.

edit: after posting the below, i have convinced myself that it's immense, PhD-vast, epic-heroic. (a dangerous truth glimpsed once only! before Cinema obscured itself again, mystic mwah mwah wooooo etc) so amended ballot:

the vanishing lady (1896)
bluebeard (1901)

although shout out for initially using an actual real dead-person skeleton before the movies all transitioned into harmless white-boned farce-illusion

This one's quite atypical for Melies, the outdoor chase scenes feel like they could have been lifted from a Feuillade film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz0I-m7n9U0

fascinating!

Phew, it's mostly been a while...

01. Barbe-bleu "Bluebeard" (1901)
02. Le juif errant "The Wandering Jew" (1904)
03. Un homme de têtes "The Four Troublesome Heads" (1898)
04. Les cartes vivantes "The Living Playing Cards" (1905)
05. L'Homme à la tête de caoutchouc "The Man with the Rubber Head" (1901)
06. Le Mélomane "The Melomaniac" (1903)
07. La sirène "The Mermaid" (1904)
08. Les malheurs d'un photographe "The Mischance of a Photographer" (1908)

Melies seen: 27

Seen 91, so narrowing it down is hard. I'll try to put some lesser-knowns higher to help them, I also prefer them because they're less overplayed. No doubt I'm forgetting some.

1. The Conquest of the Pole (1912)
2. The Pillar of Fire (1899)
3. Long Distance Wireless Photography (1908)
4. The Living Playing Cards (1905)
5. Cinderella (1899)
6. The Impossible Voyage (1904)
7. The Kingdom of the Fairies (1903)
8. A Trip to the Moon (1902)

Above all, what I think is most underappreciated about Melies is his cunning self-referentionality. So many of his other movies are overt jokes about the nature of motion picture photography, about his status as filmmaker and film star, about the fads and genres of early cinema. They're playful and amusing, but also thought-provoking.

seen 78

1. A Christmas Dream
2. A Fantastic Meal
3. A Trip to the Moon
4. Ulysses and the Giant Polyphemus
5. The Cook in Trouble
6. The Devil in a Convent
7. An Impossible Balancing Feat
8. The Kingdom of the Fairies

55.

A Desperate Crime
The Temptation of St. Anthony
Faust in the Underworld
Going to Bed Under Difficulties
The Spider and the Butterfly
Panorama from Top of a Moving Train
A Mesmerian Experiment
Joan of Arc

i don't know why it's so hard not to think of him as cuddly tho

https://twitter.com/silentmoviegifs/sta ... 7534189569

seen 33

The Impossible Voyage
A Trip to the Moon
The Four Troublesome Heads
The Kingdom of the Fairies
Going to Bed Under Difficulties
Excelsior!
The Man with the Rubber Head
The Diabolic Tenant

The Astronomer's Dream 1898
The Skipping Cheese 1907
The Devil in a Convent aka The Sign of the Cross (Le diable au couvent) 1899
THE TERRIBLE ERUPTION OF MOUNT PELEE AND DESTRUCTION OF ST. PIERRE, MARTINIQUE 1902
A Desperate Crime 1906
Divers at Work on the Wreck of the Maine 1898
400 Tricks of the Devil aka The Merry Frolics of Satan (les quatre cents farces du diable)1906
The Melomaniac 1903

left: wizard's cave (PHARMACEUTICAL HALLUCINATIONS / HALLUCINATIONS PHARMACEUTIQUES OU LE TRUC DE POTARD, 1908)
right: boogie man's cave (IN THE BOGIE MAN'S CAVE / LA CUISINE DE L'OGRE, 1907)

in both cases, the mouth of the cave opens behind the melting pot ↓ ↓

Happy birthday Georges (sorry i was fifteen minutes late)

helpfully, when i search "how many films did georges melies make", the big info box google returns says "At least 6"

it was hard to find much overlap among the ballots -- i guess that's what happens when we poll a director who made 500+ films per imdb. so perhaps predictably, our top three overlaps entirely with the melies top four 'most popular' on letterboxd. an astounding (when compared with any of our other polls) 45 different films got votes, so i'll probably post a top 25 to letterboxd

results
1. The Impossible Voyage (1904) — 9.5 pts
2. The Kingdom of the Fairies (1903) — 9.4 pts
3. The Four Troublesome Heads (1898) — 9 pts
4. The Skipping Cheeses (1907) — 8 pts
4. The Astronomer’s Dream (1898) — 8 pts
6. A Trip to the Moon (1902) — 7.1 pts
7. A Desperate Crime (1906) — 6 pts
7. Bluebeard (1901) — 6 pts
9. The Devilish Tenant (1909) — 5.1 pts
10. The Conquest of the Pole (1912) — 5 pts
10. Pharmaceutical Hallucinations (1908) — 5 pts
10. The Christmas Dream (1901) — 5 pts
13. The Temptation of St Anthony (1898) — 4.3 pts
14. The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon (1907) — 4 pts
14. The Living Playing Cards (1905) — 4 pts
14. A Fantastical Meal (1900) — 4 pts
14. The Pillar of Fire (1899) — 4 pts
14. The Wandering Jew (1904) — 4 pts
19. Le Melomane (1903) — 3.6 pts
20. The Devil in a Convent (1899) — 3.5 pts
21. The Dream of an Opium Fiend (1908) — 3 pts
21. Long Distance Wireless Photography (1908) — 3 pts
21. Going to Bed Under Difficulties (1900) — 3 pts
21. Faust in the Underworld (1903) — 3 pts
25, Excelsior! Prince of Magicians (1901) — 2.5 pts
26. Le Papillon Fantastique (1909) — 2.3 pts
26. The Man With the Rubber Head (1901) — 2.3 pts
28. The Vanishing Lady (1896) — 2 pts
28. Le Monstre (1903) — 2 pts
28. Ulysses and the Giant Polyphemus (1905) — 2 pts
28. The Terrible Eruption of Mount Pelee and Destruction of St Pierre, Martinique (1902) — 2 pts
32. Le Dirigible Fantastique (1906) — 1 pt
32. The Cook in Trouble (1904) — 1 pt
32. Cinderella (1899) — 1 pt
35. The Mermaid (1904) — 0.8 pts
36. The Hilarious Posters (1906) — 0.5 pts
36. Panorama from Top of a Moving Train (1898) — 0.5 pts
36. Divers at Work on the Wreck of the Maine (1898) — 0.5 pts
39. An Impossible Balancing Feat (1902) — 0.3 pts
39. 400 Tricks of the Devil (1906) — 0.3 pts
39. A Mesmerian Experiment (1905) — 0.3 pts
42. The Terrible Turkish Executioner (1904) — 0.1 pts
42. The Alchemist’s Hallucination (1897) — 0.1 pts
42. The Mischance of a Photographer (1908) — 0.1 pts
42. Joan of Arc (1900) — 0.1 pts

As long as The Skipping Cheeses make the cut I'm good with it.

greg x wrote: ↑Fri Dec 10, 2021 3:42 pm As long as The Skipping Cheeses make the cut I'm good with it.

it's funny, after seeing 40+ melies films, i thought i'd seen a decent fraction of the good ones, but then tallying this poll i discovered a couple dozen more i'd like to watch, the skipping cheeses one among them. i probably would have sought some of them out this morning if we hadn't started the ga smith poll today.

i'll definitely list at least 20 on letterboxd, probably 25, so it will make it unless there's a deluge of new ballots that radically change the tally before i post the final results there.

Today I'm gonna make a real push and catch up with all the list-making stuff, let's see.

Kingdom Of The Fairies
The Skipping Cheeses
and I guess
The Melomaniac
The Four Troublesome Heads
The Man With The Rubber Head.

Of 125, those are the ones that stand out, but memory's dim.

seen a bunch, but

UNORDERED LIST

the kiss in the tunnel
old man drinking a glass of beer
the miller and the sweep
grand display of brock's fireworks at the crystal palace

Curtis, baby wrote: ↑Fri Dec 17, 2021 12:58 am seen a bunch, but

UNORDERED LIST

the kiss in the tunnel
old man drinking a glass of beer
the miller and the sweep
grand display of brock's fireworks at the crystal palace

was this meant for the ga smith thread?

eeeeeeeeeeeee yes {:

posted a top 25 to letter boxd

https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-303/