Mistreated bodies
Ecstasy, this mixture of contemplation and exaltation, this emotion capable of leading us to ‘break with the common measure of things,’ is discovered amply in the director’s filmography, according to the researcher, be it in its spiritual or religious, sexual or purely physical form (extreme physical experience).
And he cites one example, Éclipse du soleil en pleine lune (The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon) (1907), which in itself summarises the majority of these ecstatic expressions. In this film, as the title indicates, the two heavenly bodies (the former having a male face, the latter displaying female characteristics) begin their advance towards each other and end up superimposing themselves on each other. The moon begins to make facial expressions associated with pleasure (eyes lifted to the skies, smiles, the tongue passed over the lips, etc.). A teacher, who is observing the spectacle from the end of his telescope, ends up losing his mind, to such an extent that he falls out of the window. After his fall he goes into a trance which his pupils seem to find difficult rousing him from.
But more often, ‘Mélièsian’ ecstasy is strongly tied to the question of physical experience. Explosions, fragmenting, disappearances, fainting fits, gesticulations, petrifications, disintegrations, metamorphoses, transmutations, becoming frozen in space, etc. There are no torments the characters in the majority of the films are spared from. The bodies are mistreated, manipulated ad instrumentalised. ‘One of the essential themes in every ‘fantastic’ film is metamorphosis,’ says Dick Tomasovic. ‘A theme Méliès exploits to the full. He created a register of acting stripped of any realism, very far from theatrical conventions. The bodies are disturbed and pushed beyond their limits.’
In Voyage dans la lune (Voyage to the Moon) (1902), without doubt his best known film, a savant attacks ‘lunar warriors’ with blows from his umbrella, making them explode and then disappear in a cloud of smoke. In L’homme à la tête de caoutchouc (The Man with the Rubber Head) (1901), the director plays a slightly mad savant who tries to inflate a head with an enormous pair of bellows. He calls on his assistant, who also wants to try out the experiment, but too much enthusiasm is put into the effort and the head ends up exploding. Finally, in Le cake-walk infernal (The Infernal Cake-Walk) (1903), one last example out of so many possible, the bodies of two little devils, which have been fighting by dragging on a cape which catches fire, suddenly disappear into the flames.
