Number of user reviews: 15
User score: 7.1
It's Georges Melies again, this time with one of his greatest feats: the septuple exposure. Yes, it is true, it really does look like Melies is playing all those instruments at the same time. Even now, my mind wonders--to a degree, at least--"how did he do that?", even though I already have a pretty good idea. Surely this is his most impressive technical accomplishment yet, a real landmark in special effects.
Yet I am bored by it. I already feel burnt out by the multiple-exposure tricks in The One-Man Band, its novelty already having been used up with Four Heads and Cinderella from the previous two years. If there s something historically significant about The One-Man Band, it's that it introduced the diminishing returns of special effects to cinema. If the trend of the late 19th century was toward "art for art's sake" (Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, etc.), Melies' films are that principle's apotheosis, the eschewing of justification or purpose combined with the theatrical flair of the showman. Melies makes art into spectacle, spectacle into art; his films are spectacle for spectacle's sake. They exist for no other reason than that they can. They are an expression of Melies' expression, and little else.
It seems pointless to even review such a film. To congratulate Melies on perpetuating his own brand seems as much a waste of time as celebrating Coca-Cola's latest Super Bowl ad (the fact that people already do this not detracting from the point.) I know who Melies is by now, and so do you. And that could be the real significance of The One-Man Band: it is the first time in this project that the director overshadows the film, where reputation precedes content. It is proof that one can make something in the quote-unquote amazing sense and still fail to amaze. For this is the limit both of the effects film and of the "auteur": the fetishism of the event, the consumption of a film by its paratext.
For the effects film, the interest is never in the content, but in the process: how was it made, how does this advance the medium, how is it demonstrating new technology? No one wonders what the thoughts of the seven band members in The One-Man Band are, after all. No one is analyzing the psyche of the man who can magically split himself, and few would care about subtleties of his clones' performances. Likewise, the motivations of, say, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, or the TIE fighters in Star Wars, are never of interest. Nor should they be ("should" being an odd, but appropriate word here: this is not a moral judgment, but of their fulfillment of the requirements of the form.) Effects films are modern-day stage magic, their allure lying entirely within the question of how they were made. And here lies the fallacy made in so many pieces on "movie magic": the idea that the appeal of special effects lies in the "possibilities" they create, in the fantasies they "bring to life". This is, in fact, the exact opposite of their appeal. The draw of effects lies in their limitations, their groundedness, their answer to the question, "what has SFX made boring?" The story of the behind-the-scenes work that went into the effects is invariably more interesting than the fictional frame into which they are inserted; the banalities of chroma keys and stop-motion are more fascinating than the creatures they bring to life. The only amazing thing about "effects wizards" is that they are not wizards at all. They do not make the world magical, but mundane, and this mundanity is what audiences have always desired above all else. It is entirely fitting (and maybe even necessary) that this race toward boredom was pioneered by a stage magician, a man who made his livelihood from converting the incredible to the banal. To that end, The One-Man Band must be considered one of his greatest successes, for it marks the point in cinematic history where special effects became dull, their gasping marvel reduced to a wheezing bore.
Other connections: Given the film's singular focus on Melies' persona, there is little to say about it that is not already covered in the previous two entries. However, Buster Keaton did borrow the concept for his 1921 short, The Playhouse. So that's something, I guess.
Other most-voted titles of 1900:
2. The Enchanted Drawing (J. Stuart Blackton | 719 votes)
3. Grandma's Reading Glass (George Albert Smith | 676 votes)
4. The Fat and the Lean Wrestling Match (Georges Melies | 605 votes)
5. The Delights of Automobiling (Cecil M. Hepworth | 585 votes)
6. Joan of Arc (Georges Melies | 555 votes)
7. How It Feels to Be Run Over (Cecil M. Hepworth | 500 votes)
8. Let Me Dream Again (George Albert Smith | 468 votes)
9. The Professor and His Field Glass (George Albert Smith | 444 votes)
10. Going to Bed Under Difficulties (Georges Melies | 361 votes)
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