A young man and woman, wandering a lushly forested landscape, come across a ruined temple. An old man at the entrance warns the couple not to enter the temple, but they disregard him in their curiosity. Inside, they are surrounded and trapped by temple priests, and they watch in horror as an imp-like spirit fills the temple with fire. The couple are blinded, and stumble back out of the temple, where the old man restores their sight.
In its exotic-temple setting, The Genii of Fire is reminiscent of Méliès's earlier film The Oracle of Delphi (1903). Motifs in both films suggest Masonic imagery; though Méliès was not a Freemason, he appears to have been familiar with some of its visual elements, if only through stage spectaculars in the style of Mozart's The Magic Flute. In addition, Méliès's father was a member of the Compagnons du Devoir, a non-Masonic craftsmen's guild with some initiation rites.[3]
References
^Malthête, Jacques; Mannoni, Laurent (2008), L'oeuvre de Georges Méliès, Paris: Éditions de La Martinière, p. 352, ISBN9782732437323
^Essai de reconstitution du catalogue français de la Star-Film; suivi d'une analyse catalographique des films de Georges Méliès recensés en France, Bois d'Arcy: Service des archives du film du Centre national de la cinématographie, 1981, pp. 293–94, ISBN2903053073, OCLC10506429
^de la Bretèque, Français (1997), "Mythographie de Georges Méliès ou les caprices de dieux", in Malthête, Jacques; Marie, Michel (eds.), Georges Méliès, l'illusionniste fin de siècle?: actes du colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle, 13–22 août 1996, Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle, pp. 285–308 (here 304)