Magic Roses (1906)

Simply Perfect

Fresh and Exciting

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This short trick film is included on the "Melies Encore" DVD from Flicker Alley, however it is is not actually a film by this director. To show the competition Melies faced at this point, Flicker Alley included two Segundo de Chomon films which were meant to take away his market. "Magic Roses" was created in 1906 which was the year that trick films already were beginning to lose their popularity. It begins with a magician (who even looks like Melies, no wonder this was once identified as a Melies short!) making beautiful women appear out of nowhere and turning them into roses, etc. While the tricks are basic, they look pretty good and still work well even a century later. The stencil color looks great too, and everything works as a whole. It may be a very typical trick film and technically an imitation of Melies, but it's still enjoyable even now.(Note: I own a Segundo de Chomon DVD set which also includes this film. The copy used for that set is not only also colored, it includes some footage at the end not included in Flicker Alley's release).

Georges Méliès was a stage magician before he became a film maker and used the camera to play tricks on his audiences. While today his methods seem pretty quaint and old fashioned, for his day they were pretty spectacular. "Magic Roses" is very typical of one of his films, as many of the shorts consisted of a stage magician (which APPEARS to be Méliès himself) doing his routine--making things appear and disappear. However, the theme is roses and most of what me creates involves these flowers as well as his usual subject--making ladies appear and disappear. Not bad at all--but also not particularly special or inspired. However, it was nice to see the pretty hand-stenciled cels--especially since they have recently been restored to their original vibrant look.Now here is the rub. According to the DVD from Flicker Alley, this had been assumed to be a film of Méliès but really was a rip-off by Segundo de Chomon--trying to pass the film off as a Méliès movie! Now that's interesting--as is his blatant knock of of "Le Voyage Dan le Lune"!

Les roses magiques (1906) *** (out of 4) aka Magic Roses This film can be found on Flicker Alley's "Melies Encore" set but it's not directed by Melies. Instead, the short was included to show what competition was trying to cut in on Melies and steal a few of his dollars with their own trick films. This time it's Segundo de Chomon who comes out with some magic roses, which he turns into women and as the trick goes on he turns the women back into the roses. It's funny that Melies is still remembered by so many film buffs yet it seems that all of his competition has been forgotten. Not only was de Chomon ripping Melies off but so were other studios including Edison and Biograph. Overall I was pretty impressed with this film as the tricks were very well done but even better were the terrific colors used. The hand-tinting looks quite nice from start to finish and I really enjoyed how it was used to bring the visuals to life. I really loved one sequence where some of the roses were hanging down and the magician then strung them together and pulled all of them back to give us a terrific background. The one thing this film is missing is that certain amount of charm that Melies could bring to a picture.

If Georges Melies had any real competition in the film magic field, it was probably Segundo de Chomon, who was the man set by Pathe Freres to knock him out of the box and take away his market share.Although de Chomon never quite showed the beauty of composition that Melies excelled at, nor his acrobatic flair, honed by his years as a stage magician, he certainly had the resources to better Melies in other areas, particularly post-production -- Pathe had a stencil process for color that was the marvel of the age, able to produce details and sharpness with regularity that Melies could manage, at best, erratically.Here he does a pretty good magic act, far more graceful overtly, if with not quite Melies' flair. In another four years, Melies would be swamped out of the competition.