The life and times of Georges Méliès

Georges Méliès is a very famous old movie director. He was the first to understand that movies can tell a story, he was born to a family of shoemakers and promptly rejected the family business and bought a theatre to become a magician, then in 1895, he witnessed something more worthwhile to him: Moving pictures. Méliès offered to buy the Lumière brothers camera, when they refused, he made his own using spare gears and springs. 

Many say that Le voyage dans la Lune ( A trip to the moon) was his first masterpiece. (Which you can see here)

He made over 500 movies in his glass studio.

After world war I, peoples tastes changed, his camera was still, and rivals swooped there cameras on tracks for multiple shots, people wanted to see action, not drama. He went bankrupt, and sold his movies to a chemical company that burned them down to make, ironically, shoe heels.  He made a living working in a toy shop in a Paris train station. 

But he made a small comeback, at the time of his death, (1930s) he was at work on a new movie, The ghosts of the metro.  Today is his birthday.

Happy birthday Georges Méliès. 

Your friend,

Jackson

Here are some more of his movies:
The Astronomers Dream,
The vanishing lady,
The Melomaniac,
The haunted castle.