Last year, Bill McFarland went from his home in Michigan to the National Audiovisual Conservation Center of the Library of Congress in Culpeper, Virginia. Among the ten reels was a lost film by Georges Méliès, a French cinema pioneer, titled “Gugusse and the Automaton.”
The film was made in 1897, two years after the Lumière brothers organized the first public film screening in Paris. Georges Méliès, who was an illusionist and later known for his pioneering work in special effects in cinema, attended the screening. Five years later, in 1902, he made “A Trip to the Moon,” considered one of the first science fiction films. He released his last film in 1913 before fading into obscurity and becoming a toy salesman in Paris, as cinema’s hub had shifted to America.
Georges Méliès was one of the first filmmakers. According to George Willeman, the custodian of nitrate film reels at the Library of Congress, the film found by Bill McFarland is likely a third-generation copy. Méliès’s films were prone to piracy, making him one of the earliest filmmakers to face this issue. He even repurposed some of his negatives to make boots for soldiers during World War I.
Although “Gugusse and the Automaton” was part of the illusionist’s catalog, it had never been seen before Bill McFarland brought his reels to Culpeper last September. In the film, Méliès plays a magician operating an automaton that grows and shrinks, engaging in a comedic battle.
“These shots are remarkably precise for such an old film, and the humor is timeless,” said Jason Evans Groth, curator of the Library of Congress’s animated images collection.
Bill McFarland’s great-great-grandfather, William DeLyle Frisbee, born in 1860 in Pennsylvania, was an early cinema enthusiast, using a phonograph and a magic lantern for traveling movie shows. His travel journals reveal his experiences, including one where he mentioned a show in Garland with a tough audience, potentially due to alcohol or rowdiness.
A century later, the Library of Congress archivists were equally thrilled by the film reels, storing them in a special cold room to prevent nitrate-related fires. They also house thousands of films from Hollywood’s golden age.
