Hugo Trailer

[Dom Jaeger]

I finally got around to seeing Hugo and must say I really enjoyed it. I guess as a lover of fine mechanics, the history of cinema, and Paris I was easily charmed, but aside from that I thought it was an exceptionally well-crafted film. And a beautiful tribute to the work of Georges Méliès. The recreations of his studio (and the old cameras cranking away) were worth the admission price alone.

 

Certainly also one of the better 3D movies I've seen, though I still find the combination of shallow depth of field and 3D off-putting. It just doesn't look right to have an out of focus blob looming in the foreground, for example.

 

I was pleased that the true history of Méliès wasn't too altered to fit the fictional narrative, but I thought the automaton that drew pictures was a little fabulous - until I did a bit of googling! It seems the adapted novel's author, Brian Selznick, was partly inspired by an actual automaton, known as the "Draughtsman-Writer", that was created over 200 years ago by the Swiss mechanician Henri Maillardet. If anything the real automaton is more incredible than the fictional one, with a mechanical memory capable of reproducing 4 drawings and 3 poems!

 

 

For a more detailed description including images of the automaton's drawings and inner mechanism (which closely resembles the mechanism inside Hugo's automaton) see The Franklin Institute's webpage on the subject:

 

http://www.fi.edu/learn/sci-tech/automaton/automaton.php?cts=instrumentation

 

Art imitating life that imitates art! I love it :D