''Rip's Dream'' ( ) is a 1905 French

silent film A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, w ...

directed by

Georges Méliès Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès ( , ; 8 December 1861 – 21 January 1938) was a French magic (illusion), magician, toymaker, actor, and filmmaker. He led many technical and narrative developments in the early days of film, cinema, primarily in th ...

Plot

Production

''Rip's Dream'' is based on two sources: the original 1819 " Rip Van Winkle" story by

Washington Irving Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He wrote the short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy ...

, and the 1882 operetta version of '' Rip Van Winkle'' (with music by Robert Planquette and libretto by Henri Meilhac, Philippe Gille, and Henry Brougham Farnie). Two elements, the mysterious snake and the village idiot, are Méliès's own creations. Méliès himself plays Rip. His son André appears as a village child carrying a large lantern. (Rip's friends' lanterns are in fact

Bastille Day Bastille Day is the common name given in English-speaking countries to the national day of France, which is celebrated on 14 July each year. It is referred to, both legally and commonly, as () in French, though ''la fête nationale'' is also u ...

celebratory lanterns with the initials RF, for République française, clearly marked upon them.) Like many of Méliès's films made around 1905, ''Rip's Dream'' revels in theatricality. While some of Méliès's earlier major films, such as '' The Impossible Voyage'' and '' The Kingdom of the Fairies'', had experimented with innovative cinematic continuity techniques, these later films are based fully upon the storytelling traditions of the stage. According to recollections by André Méliès, the snake was a "gadget" his father had brought back from England, worked by wires and springs. The snake scene was done on a raked stage to allow the gadget's movements to be seen more clearly. Some of the ghosts in the dream sequence are actors wearing white sheets; others are

silhouette A silhouette (, ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhouett ...

s cut out of cardboard. Other effects in the film were created using stage machinery, substitution splices, and dissolves.

Release and reception

The film was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and numbered 756–775 in its catalogues, where it was described as a ''grande pièce fantastique en 17 tableaux''. For Méliès's more complex films, it was expected that a summary of the action, known as a ''boniment'', would be read aloud during projection to help viewers follow the plot. A ''boniment'' published by Méliès in 1905 for ''Rip's Dream'' survives in the archives of the Cinémathèque Française. A 1981 Méliès study produced by the Centre national du cinéma highlighted the carefully introduced and constructed dream sequence in the film, and added that Méliès's invention of the village idiot character allows the film to move from reality to dream and back in a fluid and balanced way. Cultural historian Richard Abel called the film a "colorful forest fantasy," highlighting its overt theatricality and strong roots to the Planquette operetta. Writer and historian Thomas S. Hischak, reviewing the film's spectacular effects and deviations from Irving's original tale, concluded: "As an adaptation the movie is nonsense … but for film historians it is remarkable."

Notes

External links

* {{Georges Méliès 1900s ghost films Films about dreams Films based on Rip Van Winkle Films directed by Georges Méliès French silent short films Silent films in color Silent French horror films Articles containing video clips