An Exercise In Nonsense

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Some of the tried and true works here. Melies plays both the magician and his partner. The best scene is where he places a large goblet on a table and pumps the man's arm, causing water to shoot from his mouth, into the goblet. He then does a tired trick with a big sheet which when removed reveals a lobster. He does it again and it turns into a woman. There are a few other things. It's basically a magic show.

Georges Melies once again plays a magician who performs an endless series of sight gags with the assistance of stop action motion and with the foreground superimposed on the background in precisely exact manner to gain a desired effect. The opening human pump trick is probably the best, as the film simply flip-flops between humans and various objects, which then morph into other things. Melies is now over-utilizing the stop action motion to the point of inhibiting further creativity, but the edits are worked to perfection and occur so quickly that one does not tire of the repeated use of the technique until the film is over. *** of 4 stars.

French filmmaking magician Georges Melies appears on stage and produces a glass bowl under a handkerchief. He pumps the arm of his older male assistant to fill the bowl with water. Naturally, a fish will appear in the water. And, that's not all. A dizzying parade of increasingly outrageous materializations occur. Melies uses the trick photography he made so famous - but, there is more here than meets the eye. Melies doesn't just show the trick. His films display comic performance in addition to the technical skills. For example, Melies amusingly has to move the bowl when the first water (intentionally) misses the mark.****** Excelsior! (1901) Georges Melies ~ Georges Melies

Just watched this preserved Georges Melies film on the "Saved from the Flames" DVD collection. In this one, the master magician takes his assistant's handkerchief out of his mouth and uncovers a bowl from that handkerchief. He then has the assistant use his mouth as a fountain which initially misses the bowl! Fish then comes out of that mouth in said bowl. Then there's a few other tricks involving a giant lobster, a woman, two girls, and then disappearing in thin air behind a cape before coming back to take a final bow. The end. Once again, it's fascinating watching these early trick photography movies to see how people attempted even then to provide an entertainment of illusion. And Melies was more than ready for the challenge! So on that note, Excelisior! The Prince of Magicians is well worth seeing.