The Mermaid (1904 film)

The Mermaid
A frame from the film
Directed byGeorges Méliès
StarringGeorges Méliès
Production
company
Release date
  • 1904 (1904)
CountryFrance
LanguageSilent
The Mermaid (1904)

The Mermaid (French: La Sirène) is a 1904 French silent trick film by Georges Méliès. It was sold by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 593–595 in its catalogues.[1]

Méliès himself plays the gentleman in the film. The special effects include stage machinery, pyrotechnics, substitution splices, multiple exposures, dissolves, and what reads as a traveling shot (though in fact it is the action wheeling toward the camera, not the reverse).[2] Film critic William B. Parrill suspects this film's visuals influenced Vasili Goncharov's The Water Nymph (1910).[3]

References

  1. ^ Malthête, Jacques; Mannoni, Laurent (2008), L'oeuvre de Georges Méliès (in French), Paris: Éditions de La Martinière, p. 348, ISBN 9782732437323
  2. ^ Essai de reconstitution du catalogue français de la Star-Film; suivi d'une analyse catalographique des films de Georges Méliès recensés en France (in French), Bois d'Arcy: Service des archives du film du Centre national de la cinématographie, 1981, pp. 199–200, ISBN 2903053073
  3. ^ Parrill, William B. (2011), European Silent Films on Video: A Critical Guide, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, p. 475, ISBN 9780786464371


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