A clever idea, well executed. At heart it is a spoof of cultural/historical documentaries, with various talking heads (cinema professionals, critics, and the like) earnestly giving their very best expert analysis of largely fictional events in the history of early cinema. They are, for the most part, playing themselves while following a script. Despite this they mostly come across in a very naturalistic way, even though what they are talking about is not just untrue but rather far-fetched, which leads me to think that the director probably let them improvise their own dialogue from detailed notes. However it was achieved, it works.
The film also contains entirely factual segments about the remarkable career of the pioneer director Georges Meliès, well illustrated with an abundance of material, and which effectively function as a real documentary embedded in the fictional one.
The film also contains entirely factual segments about the remarkable career of the pioneer director Georges Meliès, well illustrated with an abundance of material, and which effectively function as a real documentary embedded in the fictional one.