Decades before the term special effects was coined, audiences of the newborn cinema were witnessing spectacular screen illusions, courtesy of the medium s first master magician: Georges Méliès. Such films as The Eclipse (1907) and Long Distance Wireless Photography (1908) not only demonstrate Méliès s astounding employment of double exposure, makeup, editing and theatrical trickery but provide mesmerizing insight into the social context of his work, which blended Victorian approaches to astronomy, superstition and feminine beauty with the unnatural wonders of 20th-century technology and heavy doses of slapstick. The centerpiece of the collection is The Impossible Voyage (1904), presented with the authentic frame-by-frame hand-coloring and narration penned by Méliès himself.
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