French film pioneer Georges Méliès (“A Terrible Night” & “Card Party”) returns to his theatrical roots with this homage to Joseph Buatier de Kolta’s “vanishing lady” trick with the first known use of the jump-cut discovered by the director by accident.
An elegantly attired magician takes to the stage of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin with his lovely assistant whom he proceeds to vanish, transform into a skeleton and finally restore through the magical process of stopping and starting the camera.
The director and his assistant and future wife Jeanne d’Alcy recreate their stage persona replete with all the requisite bowing and flourishing for an audience which itself has now vanished as the pioneer slowly feels his way from theatre to film.
The budding filmmaker deftly demonstrates his new discovered technique which has begun to demonstrate the possibilities of the new medium but he is clearly still bound by the old rules of stage theatrics and is only just starting to realise the impossible.