From Stage to Cinema Screen: The Vanishing of a Lady
Abstract
The article is devoted to the detailed anatomy of Georges Melies’s basic trick, first presented at the Robert-Houdin Theater as varietes, and later, in the form of a substitute technique, transferred to Escamotage d’une dame chez Robert-Houdin (1896). The author follows the tension between the illusion of the stage and the tricks of substitution in film, pointing to the intermedia nature of the effect that combined the stage illusion with the cinema, which turned Melies into the author of both theater and the cinema. Paech also points to its vitality in contemporary cinema, analyzing various strategies for adaptation of substitution tricks in films such as Prestige (2006) by Christopher Nolan, The Lady Vanishes (1938) by Alfred Hitchcock, Scoop - Hot Topic (2006) and Magic in the Moonlight (2014) by Woody Allen and The New York Stories (1989) by Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Woody Allen.
Keywords:
Georges Méliès, theater, illusion, trickReferences
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Authors
Joachim Paechkwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Universität Konstanz Germany
Emerytowany profesor medioznawstwa uniwersytetu w Konstancji, jeden z prekursorów akademickiego awansu filmoznawstwa w Niemczech Zachodnich. W końcu lat 80. kierował pionierskim tokiem studiów „nauka o mediach” na Uniwersytecie w Osnabrück. Autor i redaktor naukowy wielu książek z zakresu teorii i estetyki mediów, telewizji i kultury audiowizualnej, m.in.: PASSION oder Die EinBILDungen des Jean-Luc Go- dard (1989), Menschen im Kino. Film und Literatur erzählen (wraz z Anne Paech, 2000), Der Bewegung einer Linie folgen... Schriften zum Film (2002), Warum Medien? (2008).
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