Tchin-Chao, the Chinese Conjuror

There are a number of pretty good visual effects in this otherwise simple (and rather bland) Georges Méliès feature. Most of it just shows the conjurer 'Tchin-Chao' performing a stage act. In itself, the act is bland in some places, interesting in others. From a technical viewpoint, the camera tricks are generally effective, and are usually convincing because most of them are seamless.

Despite the quality, this is not among the best of Méliès's films, because there just isn't a lot to it. It's easy to appreciate (and at times to admire) the careful technique that you come to expect from the great cinema pioneer, but aside from that, there just isn't very much to get excited about in terms of the way that the camera effects are worked into the rest of the situation. Overall, the feature is mostly of interest as an example of technical skill with the camera.

Another one of French wizard Georges Melies countless number of early twentieth-century films, this one resembles many other films of the time in being a reproduction of a stage act. Melies plays a Chinese conjurer who performs various feats of magic on-stage. The trouble with this film is that it uses trick photography to perform the tricks which, when you think about it, pretty much defeats the object. It's not a magic trick when it's performed by camera trickery - it's a camera trick. Still, this kind of thing seemed to please audiences back then so I suppose it's churlish to complain. Ten lines - that equates to two-and-a-half lines for each minute of film...

Tchin-Chao, The Chinese Conjurer (1904)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

aka Le Thaumaturge chinois

This time out director Melies plays a Chinaman magician who does a stageshow, which includes putting a woman in a box and a similar box next to her and making the woman appear in the opposite box. You can sometimes tell how these tricks were done, through editing, but the special effects here were very good and I honestly didn't see how the trick was pulled off. The final gag is a funny one but overall this didn't contain enough magic to where I'd call it one of Melies' best films.

This short silent film is part of the DVD collection entitled "The Magic of Méliès" and is the fourth volume of THE MOVIES BEGIN series from Kino Video. Unlike copies of Méliès' films that are posted on the internet, the prints for these short films are exceptionally crisp and clean and feature wonderful musical scores. Oddly, though, is that aside from a few films such as THE BLACK IMP and THE IMPOSSIBLE VOYAGE, most of the shorts chosen for this DVD are actually not among the best of Méliès' films--having a strong tendency to show is "stagy" material as opposed to the films that have elaborate sets and plots. In particular, my favorites such as BARBE-BLEUE and LE VOYAGE DANS LE LUNE (his most famous film) are not on this DVD.

This video makes it very obvious that Méliès began his career as a stage magician. In this film, he is almost unrecognizable in Chinese makeup and dress, but the act is pure stage magic. Because it is simply a magic act, the trick cinematography instead of enhancing the film just makes the magic seem not so "magical" as you can tell the camera is stopping and starting to make the tricks come to be.

It's the usual disappearing female who leaves one location and comes back in another. The characters pretend to be Chinese which is different, I guess. The tricks are less than astounding and it's really obvious that someone came in and rearranged things before the shoot. There is no real plot and no Wow moment.