''A Mysterious Portrait'' (), also known as ''The Mysterious Portrait'', is an 1899 French silent

trick film In the early history of cinema, trick films were short silent films designed to feature innovative special effects. History The trick film genre was developed by Georges Méliès in some of his first cinematic experiments, and his works remain ...

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 ...

. It was released by Méliès's

Star Film Company The Manufacture de Films pour Cinématographes, often known as Star Film, was a French film production company run by the illusionist and film director Georges Méliès. History On 28 December 1895, Méliès attended the celebrated first publi ...

and is numbered 196 in its catalogs, where it is advertised as a ''grande nouveauté photographique extraordinaire''.

Summary

A magician displays an empty picture frame against a stage backdrop, including posters on the wall. Unrolling this backdrop to reveal another, he places a neutral canvas and a stool inside the picture frame. With a gesture, the magician makes his own image come slowly into focus in the frame. It comes immediately to life, and the magician and his image hold a conversation before the image fades out of focus and disappears again.

Production

Méliès himself plays the magician in the film. The posters on the wall advertise his own Paris theatre of illusions, the

Théâtre Robert-Houdin The Théâtre Robert-Houdin, initially advertised as the Théâtre des Soirées Fantastiques de Robert-Houdin, was a Paris theatre dedicated primarily to the performance of stage illusions. Founded by the famous magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin ...

. Effects in the film were created using the

substitution splice The substitution splice or stop trick is a cinematic special effect in which filmmakers achieve an appearance, disappearance, or transformation by altering one or more selected aspects of the mise-en-scène between two shots while maintaining t ...

, two

multiple exposure In photography and cinematography, a multiple exposure is the superimposition of two or more exposures to create a single image, and double exposure has a corresponding meaning in respect of two images. The exposure values may or may not be ide ...

s, dissolves, and defocusing the lens to create a

soft focus In photography, soft focus is a lens flaw, in which the lens forms images that are blurred due to uncorrected spherical aberration. A soft focus lens deliberately introduces spherical aberration which blurs fine texture in the image while reta ...

effect. The portrait effect is an early example of a matte effect in filmmaking, in which a mask over the lens ensured that only a specific section of the image in view would be filmed and exposed. Matting had been used in

still photography Still photography may refer to: * Photography * Still life photography, photographs containing mostly inanimate subject matter, often in small groupings * Unit still photographer, a person who creates still photographic images for the publicity of ...

since the 1850s, when photographers such as

Henry Peach Robinson Henry Peach Robinson (9 July 1830, Ludlow, Shropshire – 21 February 1901, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent) was an English pictorialist photographer best known for his pioneering combination printing, an early example of photomontage. He engaged ...

and

Oscar Gustave Rejlander Oscar Gustave Rejlander (Stockholm, 19 October 1813 – Clapham, London, 18 January 1875) was a Victorian art photographer and an expert in photomontage. His collaboration with Charles Darwin on ''The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Ani ...

used them to compose painting-like scenes. The first filmmaker to take advantage of it was likely the British cinematic pioneer

George Albert Smith George Albert Smith Sr. (April 4, 1870 – April 4, 1951) was an American religious leader who served as the eighth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Early life Born in Salt Lake City, Utah Territo ...

(who knew of Méliès through their mutual colleague

Charles Urban Charles Urban (April 15, 1867 – August 29, 1942) was a German-American film producer and distributor, and one of the most significant figures in Cinema of the United Kingdom, British cinema before the First World War. He was a pioneer of the do ...

). Méliès continued to experiment with matting techniques in later films, such as '' The One Man Band'' and '' A Spiritualist Photographer''.

Themes

The film repeats the theme of doubling or duplication, previously explored by Méliès in ''

The Four Troublesome Heads ''The Four Troublesome Heads'' (, literally "A Man of Heads"), also known as ''Four Heads Are Better Than One'', is an 1898 French silent trick film directed by Georges Méliès. Plot A magician enters the frame and stands between two tables. ...

'' but now expanded from the head to the whole body. As the film historian John Frazer pointed out, the film is inherently

self-referential Self-reference is a concept that involves referring to oneself or one's own attributes, characteristics, or actions. It can occur in language, logic, mathematics, philosophy, and other fields. In natural language, natural or formal languages, ...

, but was "made seventy years before that concept came into the critical language."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mysterious Portrait, A 1899 films French silent short films French black-and-white films Films directed by Georges Méliès 1899 short films 1890s French films Films about magic and magicians Trick films Articles containing video clips