There aren’t many films I will pay to see twice in a week, but Martin Scorsese’s Hugo has joined that select list.  I went alone the first time, as Jane was on a roll with her writing, but took her to see it a few days later, much to her delight. (Both times it was the 2D version, and I don’t see how 3D would add to the pleasure).

It opens with a great ticking of clocks and a montage of huge cog wheels turning, followed by an exhilarating plunge down onto and through a great mainline railway station - in Paris of the late 20s, early 30s, we soon discover. The eponymous Hugo, an orphan, (played by Asa Butterfield, of ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’) lives alone in the labyrinth of rooms housing the station’s various clocks since his uncle, the official clock-man, died some time before.

The station itself is quite beautifully realised, featuring the kind of cafe one can only dream of (with Django Reinhardt in the house band, can you imagine). On the first viewing I noticed a one or two second flash of someone who could only be James Joyce, a quick Google confirming that he was, indeed, living in Paris at the time, working on Finnegans Wake. I told Jane about this, and we both recognised him on my second visit, sitting next to Salvador Dali of all people.

The other part of the station we get to know is a beautifully stocked toy and toy repair shop owned by an elderly man (played by Ben Kingsley) known by his god-daughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz) as ‘Papa Georges’.  Eventually we learn that he is, in fact, the film director Georges Méliès (1861-1938), now embittered by the fact that no-one remembers his glory days. At first he is suspicious of young Hugo, accusing him of stealing from the shop; but, as the film progresses, the two become closer and the young boy eventually helps Méliès to become recognised for the genius he is, thus restoring his happiness and self-esteem.

I was thinking that I would not mention that this great French director of the silent era features prominently in the film, or would only do so after writing ‘spoiler alert’ rather prominently. But then I thought that fans  of Méliès would be more likely to see Hugo if they knew this, and that those who had never heard of him wouldn’t worry one way or another.

I certainly fit the former category, having first become aware of Méliès in 1961, when I was in Cannes, teaching English.  It was in that year, the 100th anniversary of his birth, that a group calling itself “Les amis de Georges Méliès,” was set up and I was privileged to attend a gala performance of many of his best known films at the Palais des Festivals, the venue for the main Cannes Film Festival.

Now, fifty years later, Martin Scorsese, long known for his devotion to earlier giants of the cinema such as Michael Powell, has created his own ‘hommage ‘ to Méliès. This consists not just of excerpts from the films themselves but also convincing reconstructions of some of the tricks which he either invented or popularised, notably a sequence where a group of skeletons suddenly disappears, to the astonishment of the people they had been attacking. And, at the end, we learn that a large number of his films had been rediscovered and see the director presented them to an applauding public.

Now it will not surprise too many people that Scorsese (and the book on which the film is based) did not stick too rigidly to the facts. ‘Hugo’, after all, is a fairy story, not a documentary.

The main difference is that, by 1931, when the film begins, Méliès was far from neglected by the French.  True, many of his over 500 films had disappeared, he had stopped directing in 1913 and his approach to cinema was no longer in fashion.  And yet, in 1926, Méliès was made the first honorary member of the Chambre Syndicale Française de la Cinématographie, a real honour from his peers.  Three years later, J.-P. Mauclaire, director of the early art cinema Studio 28, found a batch of twelve tinted copies of Méliès films; new prints were made and a screening of eight of them was held in a “Gala Méliès”, followed by another programme of his films in 1930.  In the following year he was awarded the prestigious Cross of the Legion of Honour, and it was only ill health which prevented him from pursuing some tentative filmmaking projects originated by admirers within the film industry. He died from cancer in 1938, his dreams still intact.

And now, in the 150th anniversary of his birth, the value and originality of this great filmmaker, conjuror and master of illusion has once more been acknowledged.  So, raise your hats, and your glasses, to Georges Méliès, not forgetting Martin Scorsese who has done so much to increase awareness of the cinematic heritage of the past.

(There are examples of the work of Méliès on YouTube, but those who are seriously interested should buy a DVD variously called‘ Méliès the Magician’ or ‘The Magic of Méliès’, or - even better - the 5 DVD set called ‘Georges Méliès, First Wizard of Cinema 1896-1913’.)

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