Georges has made over 500 short feature films throughout his almost two-decades-long career but only a few of them truly stand out as innovative, groundbreaking and rightfully new - all the rest unfortunately repeats the formula of those great ones, reuses it or is simply not that interesting from a standpoint of a person from the 21st century, spoiled by too many movies of nowadays. Back then the art of moving pictures was at the dawn, being the newest invention, and all over the world there were people grinding their teeth in it but Georges Melies was among the first ones to figure out what he can do with it - entertain people.
At the end of 1896 the world saw "The Devil's manor" (Le Manoir du diable) - the first horror, the first vampire movie and the longest movie as of then - almost three and a half minutes. When I first watched this short feature it didn't have any accompaniment so I figured I'd input a song that's about the same length as this movie and my very first choice turned out absolutely fantastic - Iron Maiden's "Running free" from their 1980 debut album fits the narrative almost perfectly. The movie itself shows Melies doing what he was best known for later - tricks, to awake a feeling of something magical in a viewer, to amaze him with a story of a devil terrorizing the castle's inhabitants with his unearthly powers by using simple editing; this technique he perfected during his career and it was used on many movies and TV shows ever since, Bewitched for instance, and still is.
At the end of 1896 the world saw "The Devil's manor" (Le Manoir du diable) - the first horror, the first vampire movie and the longest movie as of then - almost three and a half minutes. When I first watched this short feature it didn't have any accompaniment so I figured I'd input a song that's about the same length as this movie and my very first choice turned out absolutely fantastic - Iron Maiden's "Running free" from their 1980 debut album fits the narrative almost perfectly. The movie itself shows Melies doing what he was best known for later - tricks, to awake a feeling of something magical in a viewer, to amaze him with a story of a devil terrorizing the castle's inhabitants with his unearthly powers by using simple editing; this technique he perfected during his career and it was used on many movies and TV shows ever since, Bewitched for instance, and still is.