User Reviews

Georges Méliès often cast himself in the lead in his films--and this was apparently always in the case in films where his skills and style as a stage magician were required. Despite the title, the guy in the film doesn't appear to be Satan at all--just some magical guy who uses stop-motion to make things appear and bound upon the walls as he decorates a room and sets up a table. But, once he's finished and about to sit down for a drink, he sees he's alone and conjures up a lady to share it with him. A guard appears and isn't pleased to see the guy (Satan?!) enjoying himself in his formerly empty cell. So, feverishly, the magician makes everything disappear before the guard returns with help.

Other than the title, this is a pretty standard magical sort of film for Georges Méliès. However, if you watch the film, you'll see that just before the end, he DOES change appearance and looks a bit devilish...a bit.

One could say it would be a mistake to put Satan in jail. I wonder what he did. Of course, his cell is stark, so he uses his magic to spruce it up. He puts paintings on the walls, creates a table with a white tablecloth, and decides to dine with a young woman. The fun is the clean way that things come into being at his behest. He is manic from the beginning. His smugness is interesting. Why would Satan allow himself to be imprisoned in the first place.

The film resembles a magic stage-show as the prisoner (Méliès) slowly converts his Spartan cell into a comfortable and well-provisioned drawing room, and then conjures up a lovely luncheon companion. A guard arrives, prompting the prisoner to revert his luxurious room to the empty space before revealing his true self to the shocked turn-keys. Slapstick fun with lots of well-done early 'special effects'.

Some flics throw an elegantly dressed man into an empty prison cell. He proceeds to pull out all the furnishings needed to provide him some creature comforts, including a handsome young lady. How it all turns out.... well, the title tells it all.

Here we have a fairly late version of Melies' single most imitated film, THE HAUNTED CASTLE, which he remade a dozen times. As always, the piece is a matter of pure magic, both of the stage and film variety, although it is mostly the film variety in this version, enhanced the stage presence he developed in his years as a magician and manager-owner of the Theatre Robert-Houdin, founded by probably the most famous stage magician of the 19th Century, so well-known that Houdini chose a close variant for his stage name.

And even though the title gives it away, it's always a pleasure to watch Melies do this sort of film.

Satan en prison (1907)

*** (out of 4)

aka Satan in Prison

George Melies loved certain subjects and if you go through his filmmography you're going to run across certain stories that the French director did several times. This is one example and is another remake of his film THE HAUNTED CASTLE. This time out, Satan himself winds up in prison where he's put into an empty cell and before long he begins to add pieces such as a table, chairs and eventually a woman. Melies liked making films like this one where he'd simply use his magic to build up a set. He did this type of film quite a bit throughout his career and while this one here takes a while to get started once it does hit its stride it makes for a pretty good entertainment. As in the previous films, the special effects are certainly the highlights and while the trick shots are obviously done through editing, I think the quality had certainly improved by this point in the director's career. The edits were quite simple and not nearly as noticeable as they had been a decade earlier. As usual, Melies brings a lot of charm to the main character and helps get a few nice laughs.

This one is on the quirky side - very odd indeed! There are a lot of camera tricks in this film - some quite good for the time era. Melies plays Satan in this one - imprisoned and turns his room into a very nice home. In the end, he leaves the police scratching their heads. Very cute and comical.

9.5/10

The simple story of "Satan in Prison" was becoming all too outdated for the time period, even for a year as early as 1907. The plot of the film relies only on special effects and as such is very reminiscent to other films Georges Méliès made back in the late 1890s. In general, the story of this five-minute film revolves entirely around film editing--seamless but still film editing--to create illusions as part of a simple plot that is there only to make an excuse for said illusions. Thus, much of the film is carried off like a magic show, which was Méliès's intent for the movie in his lame attempts as disguising it as a story film.

In this short, Méliès once again plays Satan--a character he often portrayed in many other films, though here he takes the form of a typical bearded Parisian to trick the guards. Because of this disguise, he is thrown into a cell--really just a blank backdrop set with no bars--where to amuse himself he furnishes the place remarkably through magic powers. All the effects of the film are used for the furnishing of the place, which takes up more room than does the story, and as a result it admittedly comes across as no different than what the director had done years before. What's more is that two years later, the same concept of furnishing a room from nothing would be used in Méliès's "The Diabolic Tenant", done in a similar manner and with a similar ending.

Nonetheless, the edits in this film make it very entertaining to see because of how they are done to perfection. Unlike years before when the concept was new, Méliès-as-Satan looks very comfortable and effortless as he energetically unhesitatingly causes paintings and chairs to come out of nowhere. The seamless quality of these edits makes it a joy to watch even for those who know how it is done because of how realistic it looks. Despite being somewhat outdated by this point, this film remains a great example of how much Méliès had improved over the last decade.