Musée Méliès — Attraction in Paris

I chose this museum in part because of its proximity to where I was going to be, but also people in the reviews sounded pretty excited. I would say I enjoyed myself but kept wondering if I was missing some. I didn’t pay for the extra exhibits and I was lucky enough to be there on a Sunday, and to find out it was free. I only found about 20 minutes of wandering around to do and that’s OK with me, I enjoyed those minutes. I wasn’t stopping to read and I didn’t sit to watch the movie reel that they had playing. I didn’t know Melies going in, but I really loved the moving picture museum in NYC so I thought this might be up my alley. I didn’t want to put three stars because honestly, it was free and I was enjoying walking around Paris and appreciated seeing something novel/unique, but I wouldn’t say build a trip around it unless you know that you really...

A real discovery tour of the very initial stages of motion pictures. Meliés was the original master of special effects, and the museum shows how he brought his knowledge of magic, theater, production, and the new motion cameras all together to create movies with fantastic scenes that people could not believe.

For years, he was the chief inventor of special effect techniques such as stop motion and mattes. Then, he was the inventor of the concept of the motion picture studio, erecting a dedicated building. His studio was like a greenhouse and a classic theater all in one, optimized to capture the sun's light to make the production of films easier before electric lights were a practical tool.

This exhibit was inside the Cinémathèque, which also featured a temporary exhibit about James Cameron's creative genius. This too was exceedingly...

Georges Méliès is one of my favorite film makers. The way he melded his magician background with new technologies to come up with special effects at the turn of the 1900s was nothing less that incredible.

This museum was great. Got to see a lot of original gear used by Georges as well as the history and background.

Larger placards are translated into English, but you will want to use Google Translate.

I spent about 2 hours here with...