The old wooden chest had been in the family for a century, moved from the attic to the barn, from the barn to the garage over the generations. No one knew it contained a treasure from 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 thrown away,” he says.
But the seventy-year-old “had no idea what they represented” or how to view them. He first tried to sell them to an antique dealer, who refused after learning that nitrate reels were highly flammable and could explode.
Realized in 1897
So, last summer, Bill McFarland traveled from his home in Michigan to the National Audiovisual Conservation Center at the Library of Congress, located in Culpeper, Virginia.
Among the ten reels was a lost film by Georges Méliès, a French cinema pioneer, titled “Gugusse and the Automaton,” lasting 45 seconds. The film was made in 1897, two years after the Lumière brothers’ first public film screening in Paris, attended by Georges Méliès, a magician who later became known for experimenting with early cinema special effects.
One of the first filmmakers, forgotten
Five years later, in 1902, Georges Méliès made “A Trip to the Moon,” considered one of the first science fiction films.
He released his last film in 1913, before falling into obscurity and becoming a toy seller in a shop at Gare Montparnasse in Paris, as the cinema center shifted to America.
Georges Méliès was one of the “first film directors,” explains George Willeman, head of the nitrate film collection at the Library of Congress, who believes the film found by Bill McFarland is likely a third-generation copy of the original reel.
Méliès’s films were victims of counterfeiting, making him one of the “first filmmakers faced with piracy,” according to George Willeman. He also reportedly destroyed a hundred of his negatives, with the melted film used to make boots for soldiers during World War I.
“Timeless jokes”
Although “Gugusse and the Automaton” is listed in the illusionist’s catalog, it had never been seen until Bill McFarland brought his reels to Culpeper last September.
Georges Méliès plays a magician turning the crank of an automaton that gradually grows before striking the magician on the head with a stick. The magician responds by hitting the automaton with a hammer, causing it to shrink and disappear through a montage process.
“These shots are very precise for such an old film, and the jokes are timeless,” marvels Jason Evans Groth, curator of motion pictures at the Library of Congress.
Traveling cinema
Bill McFarland’s great-grandfather, William DeLyle Frisbee, was born in 1860 in Pennsylvania. In his spare time, he would leave his potato fields and beehives, where he raised bees, to tour the countryside with an Edison phonograph and a magic lantern, later adding a projector and films.
Travel stories recorded in worn-out notebooks document Willam DeLyle Frisbee’s adventures. “I gave a show in Garland, five dollars in revenue, tough crowd,” reads one of his journals, referring to a small town in Pennsylvania. “I guess on a Saturday night, maybe they had a bit too much to drink,” imagines Bill McFarland. “Maybe they were disappointed customers, or just too noisy? Or perhaps they were excited by the sight of the images.”
Restored reel
A century later, the archivists at the Library of Congress were as excited as McFarland about the film reels. They kept the precious reels in a cold room specially designed to prevent any nitrate-caused fires. The archive also houses tens of thousands of films dating back to Hollywood’s golden age.
The archivists spent a week restoring and digitizing the reel. Over time, the film had shrunk and torn, but it was still in good condition despite being stored for years in an attic or barn exposed to sunlight.
