We can also detect in Georges Méliès’ filmography a whole series of themes which would subsequently run through the genre of the fantastic. Such as the phenomenon of the double, which we find in particular in L’homme à la tête de caoutchouc (The Man With the Rubber Head) (1901) (the inflated head is the same as that of the laboratory assistant). Or that of communicating with the beyond, ‘a theme as important for the ‘fantastic’ as that of the discovery of another world or communication between two worlds.’ An aspect discovered in, amongst others, Le Monstre (The Monster) (1903), which recounts the story of a pharaoh who asks a priest to bring his lady-love back to life. The latter dresses a skeleton in a veil and makes the creature obey him with his fingers and eyes, before giving it a genuinely human appearance. Finally, it is enough to run through the titles of his oeuvres to understand that the supernatural is never far away in the Mélièsian’ universe: Le manoir du diable (The Devil’s Manor), L’auberge ensorcelée (The Bewitched Inn), Le revenant (The Apparition), Le Royaume des fées (A Kingdom of Fairies), Faust aux enfers (Faust in Hell), Les 400 farces du diable (The 400 Tricks of the Devil), La prophétesse de Thèbes (The Prophetess of Thebes), L’alchimiste Parafaragamus (The Alchemist Parafaragamus) etc.

‘In the end, what interests me the most in Méliès is something I have been studying since the beginning of my career: the representation of the body in cinema,’ explains Dick Tomasovic. ‘How does one decide to represent a moving body? That conveys a whole ‘Imaginary’ and teaches us much about an era, about an ideology.’

(Re)diving into early cinema finally enables the discovery of answers to questions raised by contemporary manifestations of the seventh art, at a moment where it is constructing a new genre, midway between real shots and animation. One can cite, amongst others, Avatar, The Adventures of Tintin, The Avengers, Night at the Museum, etc. So many hybrid works which liberate themselves from the logic of genres. ‘Today, if a director has not mastered all of these new techniques, it will be hard for him to build a career! Nearly every film uses them,’ stresses the researcher. For him, this hybridisation is the sign of a desire to rediscover the ecstatic power of the origins of film. Georges Méliès doubtless still has more than one illumination to cast on the history of cinema…