Trick film

In the early history of cinema, trick films were short silent films designed to feature innovative special effects.[1]

History

The genre was developed by Georges Méliès in some of his first cinematic experiments,[2] and his works remain the most classic examples of the genre.[3] In the first years of film, especially 1898 and 1908, the trick film was one of the world's most popular film genres.[1] Before 1906, it was likely the second most prevalent genre in film, surpassed only by nonfiction actuality films.[4]

"Trick novelties," as the British often called trick films, received a wide vogue in the United Kingdom, with Robert W. Paul and Cecil Hepworth among their practitioners. John Howard Martin, of the Cricks and Martin filmmaking duo, produced popular trick films as late as 1913, when he began doing solo work. However, British interest in trick films was generally on the wane by 1912, with even an elaborate production like Méliès's The Conquest of the Pole received relatively coolly.[5]

Elements of the trick film style survived in the sight gags of silent comedy films, such as Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr.[6]

Style

Trick films should not be confused with short silent films that feature conventional stage magic acts ("films of tricks," in the words of the film historian Matthew Solomon). Instead, trick films create illusions using film techniques.[7]

Trick films generally convey a sprightly humor, created not so much by jokes or comedic situations as by the energetic whimsy inherent in making impossible events seem to occur.[2] As the philosopher Noël Carroll has pointed out, the comedy in Méliès's trick film style is

a matter of joy borne of marvelous transformations and physically impossible events … This is comedy that derives from exploiting the magical properties of cinema, a comedy of metaphysical release that celebrates the possibility of substituting the laws of physics with the laws of the imagination. [The trick film] promotes levity by animating the inanimate and by visualizing a fantastic physics. Here, the undeniably high spirits evoked seem less concerned with what we typically call humor and more involved with indulging a newfound freedom, the power of molding the physical world in accordance with the fancy—in short, a kind of cosmic wish fulfillment.[2]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Solomon 2006, p. 596
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Carroll 1996, p. 146
  3. ↑ Kirby, Lynne (1997), Parallel Tracks: The Railroad and Silent Cinema, Durham: Duke University Press
  4. ↑ Gunning, Tom (2005), "The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator, and the Avant-Garde", in Knopf, Robert, Theater and Film: A Comparative Anthology, New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 39
  5. ↑ Low, Rachael (1997), History of British Film 2, London: Routledge, p. 180
  6. ↑ Carroll 1996, p. 156
  7. ↑ Solomon 2006, p. 602–3

Citations

  • Carroll, Noël (1996), Theorizing the Moving Image, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  • Solomon, Matthew (December 2006), "Up-to-Date Magic: Theatrical Conjuring and the Trick Film", Theatre Journal 58 (4): 595–615, doi:10.1353/tj.2007.0032, JSTOR 25069917