The celluloid of a Georges Méliès film found in an attic in the United States

Retired professor Bill McFarland has rediscovered a lost work by French cinema pioneer, a 45-second film titled “Gugusse et l’automate” (1897). After restoration, it is now accessible on the Library of Congress website.

The old wooden chest had been in the family for a century, shifted from the attic to the barn, then from the barn to the garage. No one knew it contained a treasure of French cinema.

No one, until Bill McFarland, a retired professor and great-grandson of a rural Pennsylvania projectionist, discovered old film reels that “seemed too precious to be discarded,” he said. But the septuagenarian “had no idea what they represented” or how to view them. He first tried to sell them to an antique dealer who declined upon learning that nitrate reels were highly flammable and could explode.

Last summer, Bill McFarland traveled from his Michigan home to the National Audiovisual Conservation Center at the Library of Congress in Culpeper, Virginia. Among the ten reels was a lost film by Georges Méliès, a French cinema pioneer, titled “Gugusse et l’automate.”

The film was made in 1897, two years after the Lumière brothers’ first public film screening in Paris. Georges Méliès, an illusionist, later known for early special effects experiments in cinema, attended the screening.

In 1902, Méliès created “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 at Gare Montparnasse in Paris, as the cinema epicenter shifted to America. Méliès was one of the “first film directors,” said George Willeman, the Library of Congress’s nitrate film collection manager, who believes the film found by Bill McFarland is likely a third-generation copy of the original reel.

Méliès’ films fell victim to piracy, making him one of the first filmmakers to face piracy. He also reportedly destroyed a hundred of his negatives, with melted film stock used to make boots for soldiers during World War I. “Gugusse et l’automate” was in the illusionist’s catalog but was never seen until Bill McFarland brought his reels to Culpeper last September.

In the film, Méliès plays a magician operating an automaton that grows before striking the magician on the head. The magician retaliates by hitting the automaton with a hammer until it disappears completely in a clever montage process that showcases precise filmmaking for that era.

Bill McFarland’s great-great-grandfather, William DeLyle Frisbee, was born in 1860 in Pennsylvania. In his free time, he left his potato fields and beehives to travel with the latest Edison phonograph and magic lantern or later a projector and films.

A century later, Library of Congress archivists shared the same excitement for the reels. The precious reels were kept in a cold room designed to prevent nitrate-related fires. Also preserved are thousands of films from Hollywood’s golden age.

Archivists spent a week restoring and digitizing the reel, which had shrunk and torn over time but remained in good enough condition for negatives that had been stored in an attic or sun-exposed barn for years. The film, “Gugusse et l’automate,” is now a piece of cinema history, available on the Library of Congress website.