Short, always witty films of Georges Melies are like illustrated books that children hide under their pillows: you can see many beautiful views in your lifetime but those images remain the most beautiful.
In the early days of silent cinema this French magician, who deftly mastered exotic craft of moving images, had no equal, but the cinema of the 1910s, which began to turn into commerce, did not need even Melies’ naive phantasmagoria. He died in poverty and half-forgotten and humanity had to go through the Second World War to realize that it is incomplete without Melies.
Direct descendants of the great magician – his granddaughter Marie Helene Leherissey and his great-grandson, son of Marie Helene, musician Lawrence Leherissey arrived in Kyiv in mid April. They organized two unusual screenings of the films made by Melies in the cinema “Kyiv”: Lawrence played the piano and Marie Helene commented the events on the screen. These were not simply film showtimes, but real performances that combined text, music, and cinematography.
Marie Helene Leherissey also answered some of The Day’s questions.
Marie, you have long been touring with film concerts. Obviously, the legacy of your family is your responsibility. Could you tell honestly: is it such a job to be a descendant of Melies?
“No, of course not. To earn my living I worked for 10 years as film editor, and for 30 years I worked on TV. I do everything associated with Melies voluntarily. I searched for films, took care of their restoration, talked to the press, organized film concerts for free. These screenings are just the tip of the iceberg compared to the amount of work that is being done to preserve the legacy of Melies. I have devoted a great part of myself to this cause, but I don’t feel as a statue on a pedestal. I am only fulfilling my duty.”
What is your reward then?
“These films are so beautiful that I simply enjoy working with them. I hope you enjoyed watching them just as well.”
Yes, I did. Were you surprised to see so many young people come to screenings of films that are a century old?
“I think now young people know much more about Melies because history of cinema is taught in schools, and the overall cultural level of young people is much higher these days. Young people are interested in such things, they have Internet, look for fun images, and the film concerts are a fun thing in itself. I think that we have won the young audience and our performances are held more for the young people, college and university students.”
When did you start to use this format of film concert, how did you come up with the idea?
“This is the original genre. Melies showed his films in exactly such manner in his movie theater ‘Robert Houdin’: screen, pianist, and text accompaniment. With the time this tradition was lost, people watched silent films in silence. My family and I restored the original form. By the way, if you count from 1945, Lawrence is the 15th pianist of these concerts. Before there were other pianists – not family members. Our performances are unique because I use texts that my grandfather taught me. He was an opera singer and had very good memory, he learned these texts directly from his father – Georges Melies himself. We reproduce the texts as a frame, sometimes add something depending on the situation – some sound, certain drama element, local realities. What concerns music, the spirit of performance, we have our own inner sense, we enjoy what we do, have fun because Melies commanded us to make it fun.”
If to speak about Melies himself, in your opinion, what is his greatest contribution to the art of cinema?
“He opened all the doors. He was the first one to try out all styles and genres, he first made staging – setting in the frame, systematic. And, of course, his achievement is the use of stunts and special effects, all of which come from the art of showing tricks because he was a magician, and also a highly intellectual person, that is why he made cinema a highly cultural product – both comic and intellectual. When Louis Jean Lumiere presented Melies with the Legion of Honor he said: ‘Georges Melies invented the art of film and tricks when we invented the film camera.’ Thus, when you have such legacy, you can’t do otherwise: you have to open it to others so that it becomes available to mankind.”
Especially since he had not an easy life. It is known that he, in fact, destroyed himself as a film director, completely burning all the negatives of his films. Can you tell if there is anyone to blame in this tragedy?
“This is a very human trait to look for those guilty of what has happened. We do not know about his psychological state at that moment. There is one version: he was a magician. Magicians, when they stop doing a trick, they destroy equipment so that no one would take his ideas. Perhaps, he followed this tradition – he burnt films because treated them as magical objects. Of course, there are objective reasons. In 1923 he went bankrupt, he owed huge sums of money, had to sell his land and for that he had to free the plot of land with two studios, his own house, where he lived, studio with costumes, decorations workshop – the total of four acres of land. He put it all together and burned. We don’t know what he felt at that moment, but he was hardly happy. In general in the late 19th and early 20th century people quickly and easily made their capital and then lost it just as quickly. Melies came from a rather wealthy family and in his lifetime he spent three fortunes he inherited from his father, his mother, and his wife. He invested everything in film making and then died in poverty. He was the first film producer, who went bankrupt in the film industry and since in those times there was no such pension system as there is now his second wife found him a kiosk at the station Montparnasse, where he sold toys to earn a living.”
What concerns the guilty, I was referring specifically to Thomas Edison, who, apart from being a great inventor also earned money from film distribution, but was slow to pay Melies royalties for his films, considering film making his own invention.
“As for Edison, it is a very simplistic vision of the situation. There are so many different factors. It wasn’t only Edison’s actions, other American distributors did the same. They bought Melies’ films, used them, but never paid the interest and caused him much distress. Secondly, Melies was a bad manager, he did not know how to control expenses. His wife – my great-grandmother, had a talent for it. When she died, he was not involved in this: every time he started with the fact that he had a lot of money and then spent it all without thinking much about it. Thirdly, after the war preferences in cinematograph changed. The audience wanted longer films with more emotions, complex plots and he could not do such things – he was good only at making short funny sketches. You could say that he became outdated. We like these films now, but back then people became indifferent to them.”
You are also engaged in archival work. Could you tell us more about it?
“Our family collected the films little by little since 1945. Initially there were only eight of the 520 films made by Melies. We began with giving ads in newspapers for fair organizers, since Melies sold his films there. Then we looked among the collectors. After that we went to first cinema schools, there were also cinema historians who searched for old films. Now students, young people, which is especially pleasant, are engaged in the search for films. So, as it is of today we found 215 films. The last one is very beautiful color film Robinson Crusoe. We regularly review the status of all the films. We have them in 16-mm and 35-mm copies, we transferred them to a digital format and gradually, when films are ready, we send them all to the French cinemateque.”
How difficult is it in practice?
“It’s a big and very complicated task. Original flammable nitrate copies are all gone. They have long been converted to 35-mm format and the original copies disappeared in the process. In other words, we are rescuing the films but are destroying the original carrier. A lot depends on the conditions in which the film was preserved. If the air was too dry, you remove the tape and the image devolves from it. There is nothing you can do about it. And if the air was too damp it is covered with fungus, which is also frustrating. So first, before we open a box we do a professional chemical analysis in order to preserve everything. Sometimes a part of film is missing, but then it is found in another copy. The films we are going to see tonight were preserved in 35-mm format and then transferred to digital format without being restored. We did not do it on purpose, because if a copy is made too neatly, a film loses something alive.”
It has been over 100 years since these films were made. Why people are still eager to watch Melies films?
“Because he is a poet. Because it is magic. People come to watch these films because they are magical, and they are magical because people come to watch them!”
