"Cinderella", however, is an important landmark for getting these story films started. Subsequent Méliès Féeries would be more polished and elaborate, including "Bluebeard" (1901), "Kingdom of the Fairies" (1903) and, to an extent, "A Trip to the Moon" (1902), although it doesn't feature a central fairy godmother. She (played here, as with other such films, by Méliès's lover Jeanne d'Alcy) is the magician-director's surrogate, creating the tricks and manipulating the narrative. Central to the fairy film is, of course, the fairy godmother. The popularity of this film encouraged its creator Georges Méliès to continue making similar longer story films "Cinderella" is the first of what early cinema historians have termed Féeries (or fairy films), to distinguish them from the generally shorter, less narrative-driven trick films, which Méliès and others also made many of. In the print available on DVD today, there are four distinct scenes with dissolves as transitions. This is likely the most advanced story film of the 19th Century. Required viewing for anyone interested in the history of movies. This is one of the many previously lost or infrequently seen Melies pictures that have been made available by Serge Bromberg, David Shepherd and a myriad of other hands in the newly issued DVD set GEORGES MELIES: FIRST WIZARD OF CINEMA. Tremendous fun and far more watchable than any other version through the 1920s. And of course, there are lots of his combinations of stage and film magic, as mice are transformed into footmen, pumpkins appear out of nowhere and the fairy godmother leaves by being lowered into the stage. Of greater technical interest is Melies' experimentation with film grammar: he uses a fade to get from Cinderella's garret to the ball. Some of the earliest sequences are beautifully hand-tinted. This is the earliest surviving of Melies super-productions - the best known one, of course, is his Trip to the Moon - and the story begins right where Melies can strut his stuff with the appearance of the Fairy Godmother.
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