L’homme orchestre | 1900 | Short, Fantasy, Trick film

Title: L’homme orchestre | 1900 | Short, Fantasy, Trick film Director: Georges Méliès Studio: Star Film Company Starring: Georges Méliès Runtime: 2 Format: Silent; black-and-white Country: France Language: Silent Genres: Short, Fantasy, Trick film --- Summary: On a bare stage, a magician multiplies himself into a full orchestra—seven identical Méliès figures playing different instruments—then conducts their performance. Afterward, the duplicates dissolve back into the original performer, a giant ornamental fan appears, and the magician vanishes and reappears for a final bow, showcasing early cinema’s fascination with self-duplication and stage magic on film. --- Background: Produced and released by Méliès’s Star Film Company and cataloged as Star Film nos. 262–263, L’homme orchestre is a landmark trick film built from seven simultaneous multiple exposures—an unusually complex in‑camera effect that Méliès would match only rarely in his oeuvre . Contemporary U.S. sources record an American release in 1901, with Edison and S. Lubin among distributors, illustrating the film’s early international circulation. --- Trivia: The illusion of seven musicians was created by rewinding the camera and carefully masking portions of the frame for each pass, allowing Méliès to perform each part without overexposing the others. Star Film cataloged the title as nos. 262–263, a numbering reflected in later filmographic references and archival listings. Archival records note variant print lengths around 100–130 feet, typical for early 1900 releases, reflecting different distribution prints and projection speeds of the period. The multi-role conceit anticipated Buster Keaton’s The Playhouse , which famously multiplies Keaton across the frame using related multi-exposure techniques. Among Méliès’s films, only a few required as many exposures; Le Mélomane is often cited alongside this title for its seven-pass multiple exposure work. --- Hashtags: LhommeOrchestre TheOneManBand GeorgesMelies SilentFilm FrenchCinema 1900s PublicDomain StarFilm