Well Deserved Praise

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Good concept, poorly executed.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

With the beginning missing (in which the skeleton turns into the magician) this is a very typical trick film. Director Georges Melies was obsessed with stage magic, whether performed in real life or realized by special effects. In fact, he was so obsessed with these sorts of magic films that at least 200 out of the 500 films he made has to be stage magic performances. With that said, it's interesting to see recurring themes throughout these works. Take the huge heads, for instance. Melies must have made over a dozen movies with dismembered heads. It's a pretty typical film in Melies's career and not especially great, but the effects work pretty well and Melies's joyfulness onscreen holds your attention.

A stage magician takes out an egg. For a while he does the usual sleight of hand where the egg appears and disappears. At one point, he makes the egg big and draws a face on it. Now the egg has the ability to become a head, transforming into one the three women. It also becomes the head of a clown. If you've seen the good Melies, this is average.

L'oeuf du sorcier (1903) *** (out of 4)aka The Prolific Magic Egg If you're a die-hard fan of Georges Melies then you're probably going to be overly familiar with the type of film we get here. Melies plays a magician who does a couple tricks with an egg before placing it on a board where it begins to grow larger before turning into some real human heads. The "trick" film is what the director is best remembered for and it's easy to see why but I've always felt that the real magic comes from the performer Melies. Just take a look at how hard he's working for the camera because he really comes off so incredibly charming that you can't help but smile even when the special effect is so obvious. The effects here are obvious with today's eyes but I'm sure even people in 1903 were quick to catch them. That's not to say they're poor because they're really not. They too have a certain level of charm that will put a smile on your face. Melies jumps all around the frame and this just pours so much charm and magic that you can't help but be entertained. One of the highlights comes at the very end and involves a skeleton.

In this film, a magician uses sleight of hand and stop-motion to make eggs appear and disappear--as well as morph into some pretty strange things. You just have to see this one...If you see this film and think maybe you've seen it before, it might be because director Georges Méliès made many films like this. After all, before he became a film maker, he was a stage magician. And so, in many of his film, he himself (sporting a wig) does a stage magician act that is able to do tricks you could never really do on stage. Using stop-motion, things appear and disappear and change before the audience's eyes. While it's very obvious he's using stop-motion film work, back in the day this was hot stuff--and audiences were amazed and had no idea how he achieved these feats.