The films of Georges Méliès are always busy. They were born of a theatre tradition that was itself outsized, loud and flamboyant. Minus sound, those tendencies became even more extreme.
But they worked, often memorably. In the hands of Méliès—a genius designer of sets and costumes, and a magician both onstage and in-camera—these short films set a bar for artistry and imagination that in some respects has never been exceeded. We could produce a long, smug list of the ways Méliès movies seem primitive today: starting with the fixed camera, anchored, always, at medium distance. But the director’s designs remain first-rank; and he knew, most of the time, what his manic little films were truly about.
That last part is key. A Trip to the Moon (1902), and The Impossible Voyage (1904), for all their lunacy, have characters fixated on goals. Those characters are fools, yes, but their intentions are clear enough. It is their attempts to make their dreams come true that generates the spectacle.
By this measure, The Merry Frolics of Satan doesn’t quite succeed. Another of Méliès’ quest films, it too concerns a man of science, embarking on a Jules Verne-style journey, encountering bizarre obstacles along the way. But we get little sense of who this man is or what he hopes to achieve. And it is surprisingly damaging to the film.
