A chest passed down from generation to generation has revealed a well-kept secret: an unpublished film by Georges Méliès, missing for over a century. Discovered by chance in the United States, this reel adds to the history of French cinema.
The old wooden chest had been in the family for a century, moved from the attic to the barn, from the barn to the garage over the generations. No one knew it contained a treasure of French cinema.
No one, until Bill McFarland, a retired professor and great-grandson of a rural Pennsylvania projectionist, stumbled upon old film reels that “seemed too valuable to be thrown away,” he says. But the seventy-year-old “had no idea what they represented” or how to view them. He first tried to sell them to an antique dealer, who refused after learning that nitrate reels were highly flammable and could explode.
So, last summer, Bill McFarland traveled from his home in Michigan to the National Audiovisual Conservation Center at the Library of Congress in Culpeper, Virginia. Among the ten reels was a lost film by Georges Méliès, a French cinema pioneer, called “Gugusse et l’automate.”
A film directed in 1897 by Georges Méliès
The film was made in 1897, two years after the Lumière brothers held the first public cinematic projection in Paris. Georges Méliès, a magician who would later be known for experimenting with early special effects in cinema, was present at the screening.
Five years later, in 1902, Georges Méliès directed “A Trip to the Moon,” considered one of the first science fiction films. He released his last film in 1913 before fading into obscurity and becoming a toy salesman in a shop at Gare Montparnasse in Paris, as the center of cinema shifted to America.
Georges Méliès was one of the “first film directors,” explains George Willeman, head of the nitrate reel collection at the Library of Congress, who believes that the reel found by Bill McFarland is likely a third-generation copy of the original.
A film never seen before with “timeless” jokes
Méliès’ films were victims of piracy, making him “one of the first filmmakers to face piracy,” according to George Willeman. He is said to have destroyed about a hundred of his negatives, with the melted film used to make boots for soldiers during World War I.
Although “Gugusse et l’automate” is listed in the illusionist’s catalog, it had never been seen until Bill McFarland deposited his reels in Culpeper last September. Georges Méliès portrays a magician turning the crank of an automaton that grows larger before striking the magician with a stick on the head. The magician retaliates by hitting the automaton with a hammer, causing it to shrink and disappear entirely through editing.
“These shots are remarkably precise for such an old film, and the jokes are timeless,” marvels Jason Evans Groth, curator of animated images at the Library of Congress.
“Gugusse et l’automate” is now a piece of history
Bill McFarland’s great-great-grandfather, William DeLyle Frisbee, was born in 1860 in Pennsylvania. In his spare time, he would leave his potato fields and beehives to travel with a state-of-the-art Edison phonograph and a magic lantern, later followed by a projector and films.
Travel accounts recorded in worn-out journals testify to the wanderings of William DeLyle Frisbee. “I gave a show in Garland, five dollars in receipts, difficult audience,” reads one of his entries, referring to a small town in Pennsylvania. “I suppose on a Saturday night, they might have been a little tipsy,” Bill McFarland imagines. “Perhaps there were disappointed customers, or just too noisy? Or maybe they were excited by the sight of the images.”
A century later, the archivists at the Library of Congress felt the same excitement about the reels. They stored the precious reels in a cold room specially designed to prevent any nitrate-related fires. There, they also preserve tens of thousands of films dating back to Hollywood’s golden age.
The archivists spent a week restoring and digitizing the reel. Over time, the film had shrunk and torn, but it was still in good condition despite being stored for years in an attic or sun-exposed barn. “Gugusse et l’automate” is now a piece of cinema history, accessible on the Library of Congress website.
