Georges Méliès: the silver lining

It often happens that a director, for all his presence of mind, his calm and self-control, when things go wrong, finds his patience giving way to exasperation, then to anger and finally to complete rage. The cause may be something entirely unforeseen, or the more common one of bad takes, due either to poor acting or to the stupidity of inexperienced extras, who have remembered nothing of the instructions lavished on them before shooting, even after countless rehearsals. I am sure, from my own experience, that other directors will be found to agree with me, since at some time or other they are all victims of unfortunate mishaps.

On the other hand, things fortunately happen out of the blue which change one’s anger into laughter. In spite of the annoyance and the time lost over a bad take or, worse, the loss of money it involves you in, if you are, as I was, your own backer (a rare thing nowadays), it is impossible to suppress these spontaneous outbursts of laughter no matter how solemnly you may carry out your role of director. Nor, indeed, can you always compete with some unexpected and saucy gag slipped into the scene, usually by an English or an American comedian, both of whom are masters in the art of playing the fool with a straight face.

Here, then, is one of these unexpectedly comic incidents. We were shooting the last scene of an elaborate fairy story, portraying the marriage of Princess Azurina and Prince Bel-Azor [The Kingdom of the Fairies, 1903]. Don’t imagine that I am going to bore you with the whole story. We had put up a magnificent palace set, entirely imaginary in detail, as befitting a fairy story. At the far end of the set there was a throne, and on its left, an elaborate staircase. The bridal procession came down the staircase and marched across the set in front of the king. We got an amusing effect by giving the bride a seemingly endless train supported by 24 pages, each smaller than the other, and with a dwarf holding the end of it, so that long after the procession had passed the train continued to move across the scene.

During the rehearsals I noticed that the four halberdiers needed as guards round the throne were missing. It was just an oversight on the call-sheet. We were at Montreuil-sous-Bois. I sent one of my assistants to get hold of four well set-up local men who would be willing to work for us for an hour. The salary was 10 francs, or 60 francs according to present-day standards. My assistant soon returned with three of our neighbours, and announced that the fourth was on his way. He was a typical native of Auvergne, a coal heaver by profession, and he had very rightly decided on a wash and brush up before putting in an appearance. When he arrived the other three were already in costume. After five hectic minutes he was also ready to take his place with them, when all of a sudden I heard a roar of laughter.

On looking round I saw that our friend had the royal coat of arms on his back instead of on his chest. I stepped in and explained to him that doublets, in the Middle Ages, buttoned down the back. “Well, I’m damned,” he replied, “I’ve never heard of that before; I always do mine up in front. Anyway, how the devil do you expect me to button myself up the back?” This sally increased the general mirth. “Someone will help you,” I told him, and in no time the transformation was complete. Taking hold of the halberd, I told him to hold it perfectly straight and not to move a muscle during the take. “Do you understand?” I asked. “Course I do,” he replied. “What you mean is ‘present arms’. I know, I’ve been a soldier.” “All right, all right,” I answered, “we’ve no time for speeches. Quiet everybody. We’re shooting!”

The scene went off perfectly, and the four extras didn’t stir a muscle, but the story doesn’t end there. When everybody had changed I sat down at my desk to pay off my actors, a procedure I had adopted to prevent those in charge of the crowd from taking half or two-thirds of the salary of the unfortunate extras. It so happened that my coal-heaver friend was in the queue immediately behind Raiter of the Folies-Bergère, then well known, and the husband of Madame Cocyte, the singer from the Opéra Comique. Raiter, who was playing the chief part as the king, got 100 francs. As arranged, the gentleman from Auvergne got ten. To everybody’s surprise he went purple with rage. “Blast it all,” he shouted, “what sort of a trick is this? You give that stuffed owl there a hundred and you only give me ten! It’s daylight robbery! All he did was to dress up and undress like me and sit on his chair like a mummy. I won’t take it! I’ll bring a case!” There was no calming him down, and he stamped off shouting at the top of his voice. The amusing thing was that he kept his word, and a few days later had me before the magistrate. It was excruciatingly funny. The judge had the utmost difficulty in keeping a straight face. He gave judgement against the fellow, made him accept the wages, and ordered him to pay costs. Almost blind with rage, the gentleman from Auvergne left the court bellowing with fury, and damning the whole legal system. After that, to him, the cinema was like a red rag to a bull. “Film people,” he used to say: “Nothing but a lot of thieves and robbers.”

And now for another comic episode. It happened in 1901 when I was making my first film of Joan of Arc [1900]. I made another one later, but this one was limited to 400 feet, an epic in those days! We had very little film at our disposal and were naturally pressed for time. For the siege of Compiègne we had built, in front of the ramparts, a formidable looking palisade, which in reality was only made of light planks, so that it would not offer too much resistance. This palisade was supported by three main posts, one on the left, one on the right and one in the middle of the scene. The posts themselves were firmly fixed and buttressed. I had told one of the strapping men-atarms, who was carrying an enormous battle-axe, to break down the centre post, a procedure which should have ensured the collapse of the planks. Contrary to my expectations, my warriors flung themselves on the palisade with such a furia francese that in a second the whole thing was borne down under their weight except for the centre post. We were then entertained to the following comedy. While the rest of the cast were racing for the walls of the town, pulling up ladders and making their assault under a hail of projectiles, the gentleman with the battleaxe continued to hack away at the post which was in nobody’s way, and in spite of all his efforts, he couldn’t dislodge it – it had been too firmly fixed. What an uproar there would have been if we had shown that scene as it was shot!

We had to start all over again and put everything back in its place. Naturally I was a little annoyed, and when I pointed out to the man what a fool he had been, he was furious. “What the devil do you mean?” he said. “Everybody heard you tell me to knock down the post, and a jolly stiff one too. I nearly pulled my arms out of their sockets trying to hack it down and you go for me! No more for me, I’m finished!” Everyone burst out laughing, including myself. There was nothing more I could say. We started the scene again, and it was quite a success, but it ended on a comic note. One of the extras, who was extremely fat, had reached the top of the wall, put one leg over the rail of the iron balcony which ran round the top of the studio, and was making desperated efforts to climb on to it, revealing, in the process, to everyone’s intense amusement, what Courteline describes as the fleshiest part of his person. I shouted up to him: “Hi, there, Jumbo! We’ll get a ladder for you. You can come down, it’s all over, and anyway you might like to know that we do our filming here by sunlight, and not by the light of the moon!”

As a young man I was a caricaturist on the staff of La Griffe, an anti-Boulanger paper [Georges Boulanger led an influential authoritarian movement that had threatened to topple the Third Republic in the 1880s]. Well, there we are, I always had a light heart, and always liked a practical joke, and in growing older I don’t think I have changed.