Century Film Project

Alternate Title: Chez la sorcière

This short trick film from Georges Méliès shows off his ability to construct a satisfying narrative around a slight story and a couple of simple effects. The French title means “House of the Witch,” which gives it a slight horror element, but it isn’t very scary.

The movie takes place on a proscenium-style stage dressed as the workshop of a sorcerer or magician. Certain set-pieces are recycled from previous movies, including “The Alchemist’s Hallucination.” At the center of the stage is a cauldron held up by a ring of metal frogs. The witch, an ancient crone (I believe it is Méliès in costume) is reading some kind of mystical text, when she is interrupted by the entrance of a young man in the clothes of a dandy. He commissions a spell from her, and she sets to work at the cauldron. She pours in a potion of some kind, then dances around the cauldron waving her walking-stick as if it were a wand. Soon, a young woman levitates out of the smoke billowing from the cauldron. The young man inspects her, but seems uncertain, so the witch gestures, and soon four new girls appear, one after the other, standing in a line next to the first one. The bachelor inspects each carefully, and finally makes a selection. He takes this girl over to a chair at the right side of the screen, and the witch makes the others disappear. Now the young man attempts to woo the magically-summoned young lady, but suddenly she transforms into the crone, cackling with laughter, when the bachelor recoils, she turns him into a donkey, then rides him around the stage, hitting him with her stick.

Another of Méliès’s charming little magic movies, this one got me to thinking that one rarely sees a man dressed up as a woman in a Méliès movie, whereas it was common at the Edison studios for quite some time. I’m not certain that the witch in this movie was a man, but I believe it was. Still, when Méliès wanted a pretty young woman in a movie, that was what he used, not a man in woman’s clothing as was usual at Edison. This may mostly reflect opportunity: Méliès ran a theater and had contact with lots of young actresses, while the Edison Studio was run by engineers, who had to make an effort to find an actress willing to perform in front of a camera. Although the set up for this film is quite sexist – a man attempts to buy a woman from a procuress – the ending puts a bit of a feminist spin on it. Méliès may not really have intended it that way, he probably felt that it was funnier and a bit more family-friendly to have the bachelor receive a comeuppance. It does work for a few chuckles, at least, and the donkey suit is charming.

Director: Georges Méliès

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Unknown, probably Georges Méliès

Run Time: 1 Min, 50 secs

You can watch it for free: here.