Fairyland: A Kingdom of Fairies
1903 · 18m · France
Directed by Georges Méliès
Genres: adventure, fantasy, silent
Tones: mythic, theatrical, whimsical
A prince's beloved princess is kidnapped by a witch on the eve of their wedding, sending him on a fantastical journey through underwater kingdoms, enchanted grottoes, and fairy realms to rescue her. One of the earliest and most ambitious narrative films, featuring hand-painted color and an ingenious underwater effect achieved by placing an aquarium between the camera and actors.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Méliès putting an aquarium in front of his camera to fake underwater in 1903 is the kind of resourceful weirdness I'll always salute. Eighteen minutes is a lot of hand-painted féerie though.
Melies at his most ambitious, with the aquarium-as-ocean trick and hand-tinted color prefiguring a century of fantasy spectacle. The Internet Archive print confirms the féerie's still-startling theatrical density.
Méliès placing an aquarium between camera and actors to fake underwater action, plus hand-painted color frame by frame — 1903 ingenuity that prefigures all process cinematography. Archive.org has a 296MB print which should preserve those tinted sequences.
Reviews
Undoubtedly Méliès's best film, and in any case the most intensely poetic.
The most ambitious Star Film production to date, widely distributed and heavily promoted.