Every Frame A Painting: Negotiating with Méliès, & Remediation from Early Cinema to Now

Riccioto Canudo in his thesis argues for cinema’s appeal: whether to the very touching, or the very comical, cinema has the ability to heighten emotion and draw attention through evoking a synthesis of symbols and meaning (Canudo 599). He states that cinema brings an anima mundi - the philosophical concept that implies “the soul of the world”, and it was this idea - of cinema’s ability to touch us in ways other forms of art cannot - that inspired the 2 minute short film I created for the purpose of this assignment, titled Every Frame A Painting (Canudo 596). Attempting to replicate early cinema techniques, the intention behind this film was to have a lighthearted look at how the founder of science fiction film, Georges Méliès, might have gotten inspiration for his films. Through this film and essay, I explore the aesthetics of early cinema that are valuable to look at as a tool to understand how cinema evolved, and to analyze the relevance of cinema in the contemporary world. 

In Every Frame, there is the idea that the pencil, and even the photography camera, are unable to capture life as the artist sees it, as it truly is. Every Frame features elements inspired by the monumental 1902 Méliès film, A Trip to the Moon. At the center of the film is the potential of cinema in motion bringing a new, unprecedented perspective to look at the world, and the fulfillment it brings for artists like Méliès. Early scholarly work largely focused on analyzing the camera’s ability to aid in the task of separating the mind from the body, and as Jonathan Crary wrote, the goal of the film camera, similar to the ‘camera obscura’ “is congruent with his quest to found human knowledge on a purely objective view of the world” (37). But there is also something to be said about the originality in Méliès early cinema work, especially his neglect for the illusion of realism became heavily debated in the same timeline. The general consensus among cinema scholars is that Méliès was of a group of influential early cinema artists that sought a unique purpose for cinema. In Every Frame, Méliès is still a young student, not fully developed in his ideas about cinema, but he becomes inspired by an instance of poetic irony - the idea of a ‘frame within a frame’. It is precisely this poetry and analogy that is possible in cinema, as defined by Marinettie et al.’s Futurist Cinema manifesto, a form of that is capable of conveying a vast range of expression, also called a “polyexpressive symphony”, and clearly through analysis of Méliés directorial oeuvre, was part of his life-long artistic objective (15-16). Furthermore, film critic André Gaudreault writes specifically about Méliès, stating his “main objective was not to create films that told stories” but instead, he was “bent on creating cinematic spectacle” (33). But many theorists like Gaudreault have interestingly called for a critical reevaluation of Méliès’s work that regards it as not just contributing to the overall development of the filmmaking genre in its infancy, but how his individual style should be studied for its unique characteristics and “certain peculiarities and aspects rarely suspected”, and elements often overlooked for their supposed emphasis on ‘theatricality’ (32). 

With this I could echo these claims for Méliés as a ground breaking filmmaker, and connect this with the intention behind Every Frame. But that would miss an opportunity to express how not even early cinema is capable of escaping the concept of remediation, defined as the “double logic according to which media…refashion prior media forms” (17). While Grusin and Bolter in their writing do not try to apply this concept to every form of media historically, they proclaim their truth - that “all mediation is remediation” to be applicable to the contemporary moment (345). We can first look at this through historical analysis of A Trip to the Moon, where Méliès has stated his inspiration came from prior texts such as Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon (Lefebvre 50). Themes present in A Trip to the Moon are also worth acknowledging to recall how even the earliest cinematic achievements addressed topics that are still largely of concern today: the concept of advancement, invention, exploration, otherworldliness, and apocalypse. I sought to also remediate this theme in Every Frame by referencing the ‘star people’ from A Trip to the Moon, through the character of Star Girl. I  suggest through these images how each mediation of one form into another one way new meaning is created. With the character of Star Girl, I hoped to express the early aesthetic and creativity of Méliès’s work, honoring the ways he helped develop early cinema ideas with inventive visual techniques, while also developing a discussion about what lies in outer space and the imagined potential consequences of our human desire to explore. 

I hoped to evoke a truth in my film, Every Frame a Painting, one that Bolter and Grusin express as how: “The content has been borrowed, but the medium has not been appropriated (16). In this retrospective essay on Méliès and his relationship with remediation, I hope that I have explained the precise references made in Every Frame, as well as provided a sufficient rationale for why a film might ‘touch the soul’ of a viewer. Cinema’s potential, and ability to put images in motion brought a new, unprecedented perspective to look at the world, and a fulfillment for artists like Méliès. The inclusion of Star Girl, the a physical picture frame to draw the eye’s attention, creating a frame within a frame of the camera; each of these elements aims to pay tribute to the early cinema scholarship, and through the remediation of these elements, I expand deeper into themes that shape the aesthetics of cinema, to understand where cinema stands today and its continued development into the future. It is both a fascinating and tedious task to evaluate cinema by its degree of remediation, and above all, this approach creates a way to pique interest far beyond the very last moment the credits roll.

Works Cited

Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin (1996) ‘Remediation,’ Configurations, 4:3, pp. 311-358.

Canudo, Ricciotto (2014) ‘The Birth of the Sixth Art (France, 1911),’ in Scott MacKenzie (ed.),  Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 595-603.

Crary, Jonathan (2010) ‘The Camera Obscura and Its Subject,’ in Jane Collins and Andrew 

Gaudreault, A. (2011). Theatricality, Narrativity, and Trickality: Reevaluating the Cinema of Georges Méliès. Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination, 1, 31–47. 

Lefebvre, T. (2011). A Trip to the Moon: A Composite Film. Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination , 1, 49–63. 

Marinetti, F.T., Bruno Corra, Emilio Settimelli, Arnaldo Ginna, Giacomo Balla and Remo Chiti (2014) ‘The Futurist Cinema (Italy, 1916),’ in MacKenzie (ed.), Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures, pp. 15-18.

November 14th 2022