The Witch (1906 film)

1906 French film

The Witch

Directed by| Georges Méliès
Starring| Georges Méliès

Production
company

Star Film Company

Release date

* 1906 (1906)

Running time

| 820 feet
(approx. 15 minutes)
Country| France
Language| Silent

The Witch (French: La Fée Carabosse ou le Poignard fatal, literally "The Fairy Carabosse or the Fatal Poignard") is a 1906 French short silent film by Georges Méliès. The film is named for a witch, Carabosse, who tells a poor troubadour that he is destined to rescue a damsel in distress, but demands a high price for a magic charm to help the troubadour in his quest. When the troubadour cheats the witch to obtain the magic charm, she sets out in pursuit of him, and puts various obstacles in his way before finally being vanquished by forces of good.

The film, said to have been inspired by Breton folklore, combines the traditional figure of Carabosse—first created in a 17th-century literary fairy tale by Madame d'Aulnoy—with a varied array of other magical and legendary elements, including ghosts, Druids, and monstrous beasts. It was commissioned by the Grands Magasins Dufayel department store, for children to watch while their parents shopped. Méliès made the film as a lavish, special-effects-heavy spectacle in the féerie tradition, possibly appearing in it himself. A print of the film survives; historians have commented on the film's spectacular qualities, its hodgepodge of fairy-tale attractions, and the ambiguous question of whether Carabosse's defeat is morally justified in the world of the film.

## Plot

[edit]

A surviving print of the film

Note: Since the film is silent and has no intertitles, some names and details in the summary below are taken from the film's description in Méliès's American catalogue.[1]

Lothaire, a penniless troubadour who is the last in a lineage of gallant knights, visits the witch Carabosse to find out what his future holds. The witch tells him that he will rescue and be loved by a damsel in distress, currently trapped in a dungeon as part of a plot by her father to steal her inheritance. Carabosse magically summons up a portrait of the damsel so that Lothaire will recognize her. Lothaire asks for a magic charm to help him rescue the damsel. The witch offers an enchanted four-leaf clover, but demands a steep price for it. Lothaire, having no money, tricks the witch by giving her a money bag loaded with sand, and hastily leaves to start his quest. Carabosse, discovering the way Lothaire has cheated her, is furious. She vows revenge and sets out in pursuit of the troubadour. As a weapon for herself, she enchants a poignard so that it can fly through the air and spit fire. The chase begins.

Lothaire tries to escape Carabosse by pushing down piles of rocks on her, but they are no match for the witch's magical powers, and she continues the chase flying on a broomstick. Crossing a field of sacred monoliths built by ancient Druids, Lothaire reaches a cemetery. He is surrounded by ghosts, but wards them off with the four-leaf clover. He reaches the imprisoned damsel's castle, and finds it guarded by monsters: a giant toad and owl, a fire-breathing dragon, and various serpents. Lothaire is about to be eaten when a Druid priest appears, on the ruin of an old altar nearby. He gives a piece of holy mistletoe to the troubadour, who uses it to tame the animals. Lothaire continues into the castle, where a ghostly knight presents him with an anointed sword used at the Crusades. Lothaire holds it in his teeth and climbs up the castle walls to the damsel's dungeon cell, while the Druid priest holds back the pursuing witch.

At long last he reaches the damsel, undoes her chains, and breaks open the cell door with a convenient battering ram. The troubadour and damsel escape just as Carabosse reaches the window, and enraged she flies away on her broom, creating a thunderstorm. She catches up to the escaping couple on the cliffs of a lake, and attacks them with her magic poignard. She is about to triumph when the Druid priest appears again, attacks Carabosse with her own broomstick, and sends her falling into the lake. One of her minions, a gnome, attempts to slay the Druid with an axe, but he turns the poignard on the gnome and vanquishes him. The couple, safe at last, receive a benediction from the Druid and vow eternal love.

## Production

[edit]

The Grands Magasins Dufayel store, circa 1904

The film was one of several commissioned from Méliès by the Grands Magasins Dufayel department store,[2] which projected féerie films for children to watch in an adjoining room while their parents were shopping.[3] The Dufayel showings were accompanied by various arrangements of sound effects, music, and spoken commentaries. They were so successful that, according to one recollection, children always complained when their parents came to collect them again.[2]

According to advertisements, the film was inspired by Breton folklore;[4] preproduction sketches indicate that Méliès initially planned to call it La Princesse Fatale.[3] The witch Carabosse, for whom the film was finally named, had been a central figure in French fairy tales since her creation by Madame d'Aulnoy in the story "The Princess Mayblossom". Carabosse, acting as a wicked fairy godmother, famously appears in Tchaikovsky's ballet version of The Sleeping Beauty.[5]

Special effects in the film were carried out using stage machinery, horizontally rolling scenery, pyrotechnics, substitution splices, multiple exposures, and dissolves. The title lettering style, seemingly inspired by Gothic art, was used the same year in Méliès's films The Tramp and the Mattress Makers and Soap Bubbles.[3] The actors are uncredited, but film historian Georges Sadoul believed Méliès himself to be in the film as the witch Carabosse.[4]

## Themes

[edit]

Cultural historian Richard Abel finds The Witch consistent with Méliès's other spectacular féerie films, highlighting similarities to The Kingdom of the Fairies (1903). Abel puts the film squarely in the artistic tradition nicknamed the "cinema of attractions", noting the importance of hand-coloring to the film's appeal and commenting that the supposed narrative climax, the damsel's rescue, "seems perfunctory" compared to the fight with the monsters.[6]

Cultural historian Jack Zipes similarly sees the film as "a hodge-podge of fairy-tale motifs held together by the typical narrative structure of the féerie". Zipes, praising Méliès's performance as Carabosse, notes that her downfall after being cheated is an inversion of standard fairy-tale logic, and is justified mainly by the inclusion of religious motifs that must defeat the "dark forces of evil" she represents. Zipes concludes that "the inconsistencies and the preposterous appearances of ghosts, a druid, a knight, and beasts, and reptiles are calculated to make spectators smile and ponder whether the absurdities on the screen can be so easily overcome as they seem to be."[5]

## Release

[edit]

Méliès's design for the cemetery set

The Witch was sold by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 877–887 in its catalogues, where it was advertised as a grande légende fantastique bretonne en 20 tableaux ("grand fantastical Breton legend in twenty tableaux").[4] The film was sold in a single reel of 820 feet, which at Méliès's preferred frame rate gives a running time of about fifteen minutes.[1] The film was available both in black and white and in a hand-colored version sold for a higher price; a set of twelve publicity stills for the film were also available separately.[1]

A hand-colored nitrate film print of The Witch survives at the Cinémathèque Française.[7] A restoration by film preservationist David Shepard was released on home video in 2008, with a music score by Eric Beheim, as part of a Méliès collection.[8] A new 8K digitization and 4K restoration was initiated by the Cinémathèque in 2020, and premiered at the film festival Il Cinema Ritrovato in August of that year.[7]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c Méliès, Georges (1905), Complete Catalogue of Genuine and Original "Star" Films, New York: Geo. Méliès, pp. 113–118, doi:10.7282/T3CR5TJ3113-118&rft.pub=Geo.+Méliès&rft.date=1905&rft_id=info:doi/10.7282/T3CR5TJ3&rft.aulast=Méliès&rft.aufirst=Georges&rft_id=http://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/26311/&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:The+Witch+(1906+film)" class="Z3988">
2. ^ a b Barnier, Martin (2014), "Le son féerique de Méliès", in Malthête, Jacques; Gaudreault, André; Le Forestier, Laurent (eds.), Méliès, carrefour des attractions; suivi de Correspondances de Georges Méliès (1904-1937), Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, pp. 73–83 (here 80–81)
3. ^ a b c Essai de reconstitution du catalogue français de la Star-Film; suivi d'une analyse catalographique des films de Georges Méliès recensés en France, Bois d'Arcy: Service des archives du film du Centre national de la cinématographie, 1981, p. 267, ISBN 2903053073
4. ^ a b c Malthête, Jacques; Mannoni, Laurent (2008), L'oeuvre de Georges Méliès, Paris: Éditions de La Martinière, p. 204, ISBN 9782732437323
5. ^ a b Zipes, Jack (2010), The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films, New York: Routledge, pp. 41–43, ISBN 978113585395241-43&rft.pub=Routledge&rft.date=2010&rft.isbn=9781135853952&rft.aulast=Zipes&rft.aufirst=Jack&rft_id=https://books.google.com/books?id=RXSQAgAAQBAJ&pg;=PA44&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:The+Witch+(1906+film)" class="Z3988">
6. ^ Abel, Richard (1998), The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema, 1896–1914, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 158, ISBN 9780520912915
7. ^ a b Pichard, Hervé (2020), "La Fée Carabosse ou le Poignard fatal", Il Cinema Ritrovato, Cineteca di Bologna
8. ^ Méliès, Georges (2008), Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (DVD; short film collection), Los Angeles: Flicker Alley, ISBN 978-1893967359

## External links

[edit]

* The Witch at IMDb

* v
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Georges Méliès

Actualities|

* Actualities (1896–1900)
* Reconstructed actualities (1897–1902)

Films|

| 1896|

* Playing Cards
* Conjuring
* Watering the Flowers
* The Rag-Picker
* Post No Bills
* The Rescue on the River
* A Terrible Night
* Arrival of a Train (Joinville Station)
* A Lightning Sketch
* Conjurer Making Ten Hats in Sixty Seconds
* A Serpentine Dance
* Miss de Vère (English Jig)
* The Vanishing Lady
* The Haunted Castle
* Tom Old Boot

|

1897|

* A Nightmare
* Comedian Paulus Singing
* A Funny Mahometan
* An Hallucinated Alchemist
* The Haunted Castle
* On the Roofs
* D. Devant, Conjurer
* The School for Sons-in-law
* The Last Cartridges
* The Surrender of Tournavos
* Sea Fighting in Greece
* Gugusse and the Automaton
* Between Calais and Dover
* The Laboratory of Mephistopheles
* The Barber and the Farmer
* The Bewitched Inn
* A Private Dinner
* After the Ball
* A Hypnotist at Work
* Dancing in a Harem

1898|

* A Novice at X-Rays
* Divers at Work on the Wreck of the "Maine"
* The Magician
* The Famous Box Trick
* Pygmalion and Galatea
* Adventures of William Tell
* The Astronomer's Dream
* The Cave of the Demons
* The Four Troublesome Heads
* The Temptation of Saint Anthony

1899|

* A Dinner Under Difficulties
* Robbing Cleopatra's Tomb
* The Bridegroom's Dilemma
* An Up-to-Date Conjuror
* The Devil in a Convent
* The Pillar of Fire
* The Clown and Automobile
* A Mysterious Portrait
* Christ Walking on the Water
* Summoning the Spirits
* The Dreyfus Affair
* The Human Pyramid
* Cinderella
* The Snow Man
* The Mysterious Knight

1900|

* Addition and Subtraction
* The Miracles of the Brahmin
* The Cook's Revenge
* The Misfortunes of an Explorer
* Paris Exposition, 1900
* The One-Man Band
* Joan of Arc
* The Rajah's Dream
* The Two Blind Men
* The Artist and the Mannikin
* Thanking the Audience
* The Christmas Dream
* Crying and Laughing
* Coppelia, the Animated Doll
* Fat and Lean Wrestling Match
* A Fantastical Meal
* Going to Bed Under Difficulties
* The Doctor and the Monkey
* What Is Home Without the Boarder
* China Versus Allied Powers
* The Brahmin and the Butterfly
* The Triple-Headed Lady
* Dislocation Extraordinary
* Red Riding Hood

1901|

* The Magician's Cavern
* Excelsior!
* The Sacred Fountain
* Blue Beard
* The Man with the Rubber Head

1902|

* The Eruption of Mount Pelee
* The Catastrophe of the Balloon "Le Pax"
* A Trip to the Moon
* The Shadow-Girl
* The Coronation of Edward VII
* The Treasures of Satan
* The Human Fly
* Up-to-Date Surgery
* Gulliver's Travels Among the Lilliputians and the Giants
* Robinson Crusoe
* The Marvellous Wreath

1903|

* Misfortune Never Comes Alone
* The Infernal Cake Walk
* The Mysterious Box
* The Queen's Musketeers
* The Enchanted Well
* The Inn Where No Man Rests
* The Drawing Lesson
* The Mystical Flame
* The Witch's Revenge
* The Oracle of Delphi
* A Spiritualistic Photographer
* The Melomaniac
* The Monster
* The Kingdom of the Fairies
* The Infernal Cauldron
* The Apparition
* Jupiter's Thunderbolts
* Ten Ladies in One Umbrella
* Jack Jaggs and Dum Dum
* Bob Kick, the Mischievous Kid
* Extraordinary Illusions
* Alcofrisbas, the Master Magician
* Jack and Jim
* The Magic Lantern
* The Ballet-Master's Dream
* The Damnation of Faust
* The Terrible Turkish Executioner
* A Moonlight Serenade

1904|

* Tit for Tat
* A Wager Between Two Magicians, or Jealous of Myself
* Every Man His Own Cigar Lighter
* The Bewitched Trunk
* The Fugitive Apparitions
* The Untamable Whiskers
* The Clockmaker's Dream
* The Imperceptible Transmutations
* A Miracle Under the Inquisition
* Faust and Marguerite
* Tchin-Chao, the Chinese Conjurer
* The Wonderful Living Fan
* The Cook in Trouble
* The Mermaid
* The Providence of the Waves
* The Barber of Seville
* The Wonderful Rose-Tree
* The Impossible Voyage
* The Firefall
* The Christmas Angel

1905|

* The Living Playing Cards
* The Black Imp
* The Crystal Casket
* The Lilliputian Minuet
* A Mesmerian Experiment
* The Venetian Looking-Glass
* The Palace of the Arabian Nights
* The Tower of London
* The Enchanted Sedan Chair
* An Adventurous Automobile Trip
* The Mysterious Island
* Unexpected Fireworks
* Rip's Dream
* The Scheming Gambler's Paradise
* The Inventor Crazybrains and His Wonderful Airship

1906|

* A Mix-up in the Gallery
* The Chimney Sweep
* The Tramp and the Mattress Makers
* The Hilarious Posters
* A Desperate Crime
* Punch and Judy
* A Roadside Inn
* Soap Bubbles
* The Merry Frolics of Satan
* A Seaside Flirtation
* The Mysterious Retort
* The Witch
* Robert Macaire and Bertrand

1907|

* Rogues' Tricks
* Under the Seas
* How Bridget's Lover Escaped
* Tunnelling the English Channel
* The Eclipse, or the Courtship of the Sun and Moon
* Hamlet
* Shakespeare Writing "Julius Caesar"
* Sightseeing Through Whisky
* Good Glue Sticks
* Satan in Prison
* Delirium in a Studio
* The Knight of Black Art
* The Good Luck of a "Souse"

1908|

* Humanity Through the Ages
* The Genii of Fire
* Why That Actor Was Late
* The Dream of an Opium Fiend
* Long Distance Wireless Photography
* The Prophetess of Thebes
* In the Barber Shop
* A Fake Diamond Swindler
* The New Lord of the Village
* The Miser
* Sideshow Wrestlers
* The Broken Violin
* A Love Tragedy in Spain
* Mishaps of the New York–Paris Race
* The Woes of Roller Skaters
* Love and Molasses
* The Mischances of a Photographer
* The Indian Sorcerer
* A Tricky Painter's Fate
* French Cops Learning English
* Fun With the Bridal Party
* Not Guilty
* Buncoed Stage Johnnie
* A Grandmother's Story
* The Helping Hand
* The Old Footlight Favorite
* Honeymoon in a Balloon
* The Duke's Good Joke
* Incident from Don Quixote
* The Fairy Dragonfly
* Moitié de polka
* Fortune Favors the Brave
* Hypnotist's Revenge
* Pharmaceutical Hallucinations
* The Good Shepherdess and the Evil Princess
* The Living Doll
* Seein' Things
* The Frozen Policeman
* Tribulation or the Misfortunes of a Cobbler

1909|

* The Doctor's Secret
* The Diabolic Tenant
* Whimsical Illusions
* King of the Mediums
* The Spider and the Butterfly

1911|

* Baron Munchausen's Dream
* The Diabolical Church Window

1912|

* The Conquest of the Pole
* Cinderella or the Glass Slipper
* The Knight of the Snows
* The Voyage of the Bourrichon Family

Related|

* Jehanne d'Alcy (wife)
* Gaston Méliès (brother)
* Georges Méliès in culture
* Le Grand Méliès (1952 documentary)
* Around the World in 80 Days (1956 film prologue)
* The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007 book)
* Hugo (2011 film)
* Théâtre Robert-Houdin

* Filmography
* Bibliography
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