Knight of Black Art (1908) User Reviews

Yet another film where Georges Méliès does magic for the audience.

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 10 September 2020]

The early French filmmaker Georges Méliès was originally a stage magician and it's pretty obvious in many of his films. That's because in probably a hundred or more of his 500+ films he essentially does his stage act in front of the camera. Sure, the costumes differ and the tricks differ a bit, but they are all basically the same film and is churned them out one after the other.

In this one, Méliès and his three assistants are dressed in costumes that appear to be from about 1500. The magician takes a disc and paints a moon-like face on it. Then, again and again, he reaches in the face and pulls out various items...such as wine and LOTS of clothing. Then towards the end, the assistants themselves change in various ways.

To achieve this trick, Georges Méliès simply stopped the camera and then inserted whatever item he wanted to produce and then re-started the camera. If you look at the assistants, you can even notice that their expressions change a bit with each stoppage. Not a bad trick for 1908, but also a bit tiresome as well as he simply wasn't innovating in any way with these particular films...just doing the same shtick again and again.

Very Little New

[Hitchcoc · 4/10 · 20 November 2017]

What we have is a filmed magic show, featuring a disk that is the center of most of the action. At one point the magician paints a face on the thing, punches out the eyes, nose, and mouth. The then begins to pull garments from the orifices. Eventually we have the split screen thing with a body seeming coming up out of nothing. There are some nice tricks but they are sort of old hat and if you are a fan of this fellow, you've seen it all before. Not a bad thing, but we do come to expect more.

Fun Trick Film from Melies

[Michael_Elliott · 16 August 2012]

The Knight Of Black Art (1908)

*** (out of 4)

aka Le tambourin fantastique

George Melies plays the title character who does a variety of tricks in this charming winner. The first big trick has the Knight having his two assistants hold up a round board, which he paints a face and eyes on. Soon the Knight is pulling out various items from the mouth. The second portion of the film features the Knight making himself disappear. I must admit that by 1908 Melies had being doing these "trick" films perhaps way too long and we were starting to get a "been there, done that" feel but that really didn't take away any of the entertainment with this one. I thought all of the effects were quite charming even though it's rather obvious how they were done. This is especially true of the scene where Melies makes himself disappear and even though you can see how it was done, it really doesn't take anything away from the film. Fans of the French master's work should really enjoy this one.