The Living Playing Cards

The Living Playing Cards (French: Les Cartes vivantes) is a 1905 French short silent film directed by Georges Méliès.

The Living Playing Cards
Directed byGeorges Méliès
StarringGeorges Méliès
Production
company
Release date
1905
Running time
2.6 minutes at 16fps[1]
CountryFrance
LanguageSilent

Synopsis

A magician enters a stage set on which a large white screen has been placed. Taking a deck of playing cards, he shows one to the camera, makes it grow larger, and finally throws it upon the screen, creating a gigantic reproduction of the card. He does the same with two face cards, a queen and king, each of which comes to life and steps out of the card. The king chases the magician off the stage, before ripping off his disguise to reveal the magician himself.

Production

The film is based on a stage magic act performed at Méliès's theatre of illusions, the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris. In the stage version, the magician was Gaston Velle, who would himself later become a director of Méliès-like trick films for Pathé Frères.[1] In the film version, Méliès himself plays the magician. The special effects used are substitution splices and dissolves.[2]

gollark: I don't think even biology can just casually make things into different isotopes.
gollark: The wikipedia page says they used a "scanning-tunneling microscope".
gollark: The electron microscope image one is a bunch of carbon monoxide molecules apparently.
gollark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NanoPutian
gollark: Oh, I may be confusing it with another thing.

References
  1. "Cartes vivantes, Les", Giornate Database, Pordenone Silent Film Festival, 2000, retrieved 17 December 2017
  2. Essai de reconstitution du catalogue français de la Star-Film; suivi d'une analyse catalographique des films de Georges Méliès recensés en France, Bois d'Arcy: Service des archives du film du Centre national de la cinématographie, 1981, pp. 213–14, ISBN 2903053073, OCLC 10506429
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