The Fugitive Apparitions (1904) User Reviews

While appearing very crude today, for 1904 it was pretty advanced.

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 20 September 2011]

The subject matter for this film is very common to the filmmaker. It shows a magician (Méliès himself) making things appear and disappear. At the end, he and his female assistant appear to magically change places.

When seen today, "The Fugitive Apparitions" appears quaint and very dated. The film tricks are easy to understand and poorly done. HOWEVER, this was 1904. And, Georges Méliès was actually a pioneer in using some of these film tricks. While he's been stopping the camera and re-starting it in quite a few earlier films to make things seem to appear and disappear as if by magic, here he uses some of his earliest dissolving techniques--making things appear to change before our very eyes. This took some work and, oddly, the dissolves are much better than his use of stop-motion to make things appear and disappear. Well worth seeing if you are a nut for early cinema.

Changing Places

[Hitchcoc · 6/10 · 15 November 2017]

Melies readies a fancy chair with a scarf (which has just produced a young woman). He has her sit down and then he, himself, sits on the other side of the stage. The two of them change places before our very eyes without leaving their chairs. There are a couple of other similar effects as well. He has some fairly convincing disappearing things as well.

Movie Magic

[boblipton · 7/10 · 8 February 2010]

Although he produced, directed and starred in almost every category of film of the era with the possible exception of the western -- he left those to his brother Gaston in America, where he recruited Francis Ford, later more famous as John Ford's brother -- Georges Melies' most numerous films are those in which he appears as a magician, performing magic. As he started out as a stage magician and, indeed, went into film production for fillers during his stage shows, this is hardly surprising. But almost invariably, the magic in his movies is a mixture of stage and movie magic -- combining sleight-of-hand and trap doors with double exposures and hidden cuts.

In this short, he performs magic, but the techniques he uses are all those of the movie camera. A unique and interesting example of his work.

Minor Trick from Melies

[Michael_Elliott · 25 August 2011]

Les apparitions fugitives (1904)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

aka The Fugitive Apparitions

This is a decent little film from Georges Melies that once again features him playing a magician. In the film he uses a see through clothe to bring a man into the picture and for the rest of the movie he makes this man disappear and eventually turn into a movie. One of the biggest tricks happen when he places the man in a chair, Melies gets in another and the two magically swap places. Melies made a lot of trick films in his career and this one here isn't nearly the worst but then again it's no where near his best either. This here is pretty much middle-ground stuff as the tricks really aren't that special and they're even more obvious than some of the director's better work. I thought the trick photography was rather poorly done here as the tricks were a lot more obvious than many of the film that he was making nearly a full decade earlier. What really makes the film work is the performance of Melies who is as energetic as you could hope for.

A study in dissolves

[Tornado_Sam · 28 July 2018]

What can I say? This Méliès short is just another one of his magic movies. In this one he plays (yet again) a magician who makes his assistant, dressed like a toreador, appear and disappear for about two minutes. It appears Méliès was into dissolves at this point in his career, because many of the tricks here are done in this manner (and "The Untamable Whiskers" came out the same year). The thing is, the majority of these dissolves look a little sloppily done and the film just doesn't feel very new. But, it's not off-putting and Méliès is as always energetic and keeps you entertained.