Robert Houdin was a French magician and illusionist. He doesn't appear in this early experiment, but his name is loaned to one of the first illusions on film provided by Georges Melies. Melies himself said that this was the first film in which he used stop motion - a process in which illusions could be performed by stopping his camera, rearranging the set, and then starting the camera again, to give the illusion that items and people have either appeared or disappeared.
In this film, an elegantly dressed woman sits in a chair while the magician drapes her with a shroud. The magician removes the shroud and the woman has disappeared. He makes a few gestures and voila! He returns - a skeleton??? Oh the horror!. So he brings the shroud back into the act, covers the skeleton, and the entire woman and her clothes are recovered. Wherever the woman went, the clothes MUST follow! After all this is literally the Victorian era even though it is France.
The magician was played by Georges Melies himself, and the woman was played by Jehanne d'Alcy. D'alcy appeared in numerous Melies films over the years, having left the theater to devote herself to film acting, one of the first actors to do this. The two got married, but oddly not until 1925 when D'Alcy was 60 and Melies was 64. They were married until his death in 1938.
In this film, an elegantly dressed woman sits in a chair while the magician drapes her with a shroud. The magician removes the shroud and the woman has disappeared. He makes a few gestures and voila! He returns - a skeleton??? Oh the horror!. So he brings the shroud back into the act, covers the skeleton, and the entire woman and her clothes are recovered. Wherever the woman went, the clothes MUST follow! After all this is literally the Victorian era even though it is France.
The magician was played by Georges Melies himself, and the woman was played by Jehanne d'Alcy. D'alcy appeared in numerous Melies films over the years, having left the theater to devote herself to film acting, one of the first actors to do this. The two got married, but oddly not until 1925 when D'Alcy was 60 and Melies was 64. They were married until his death in 1938.