Despite IMDb's date, this film was actually made in 1911--in 1910, Méliès actually stopped production altogether to tour Europe with a stage magic spectacle called "Les Fantômes de Nil". I am not sure why IMDb says 1910--maybe other sites advertise this discrepancy.This Méliès short is one of his last six--made under the supervision of Pathé Frères, a former rival of Star Film. Because the trick film fad had died out at this point, Méliès found himself becoming less and less popular. Even his fairy-tale extravaganzas were outdated. So I guess when he made this one, he was kind of saying good-bye to his special effects. It's pretty much seven straight minutes of movie magic. An alchemist (Méliès himself, if I'm not mistaken) is sitting at his desk when Satan shows up and starts torturing him. First, he makes a picture of a beautiful woman on the stained glass window come to life. The alchemist then flirts with her only for her to disappear and show up later as the thing progresses. Then all this other stuff happens. The woman multiplies herself, a odd little gnome shows up...and the devil is behind it all. Finally, he drags them off to hell. The end.The entire film is tinted in a beautiful neon green/yellow color which adds to the atmosphere of the film--I really like this aspect and it also helps distinguish the short from earlier trick films. The visual effects also feel a little different and not so same ole. I especially like the part in which the alchemist gets caught in the window and the fire and smoke shoots out--don't even know how Méliès achieved this. Another thing that can be noted is that the devil in here is played by a different actor (maybe I am wrong, but he didn't look like Méliès at all) which is odd, considering Satan was a character he would often portray in earlier films. Despite all this, however, it's obvious why Méliès was almost done with his career. No plot, nothing. Just effects. But it's still a whole lot of fun.

Lord only knows what this one was about. Georges Melies was clearly running out of ideas by the time he made this, so there's nothing particularly new here. There's certainly no story-line as far as I could make out, other than perhaps one chap being drugged by some devil type and then awakening to perform magic tricks on a lady in a window that he brings to life. People appear, disappear then re-appear before disappearing again with monotonous regularity, apparently until Melies' camera ran out of film.I can't imagine even audiences from 1910 being impressed by this one, and on this evidence it's hardly surprising that Melies' film-making career would be over in a couple more years.

I noticed that the "Georges Méliès Encore" DVD put all the bizarre and difficult to understand shorts towards the end of the disc. Among them, this is THE most confusing. I do understand that the weird looking guy with the feather on his head is supposed to be the Devil--but he looks nothing like what modern illustrators would conceive. It's Georges Méliès himself in this role. Without intertitle cards, it's hard to know exactly what's transpiring--and I watched it twice to be as certain as I could! A guy is apparently working on stained glass panels for a church. The Devil sneaks in and gives the guy a Mickey. While asleep, the Devil messes with the stained glass. Then, the guy awakens and does a whole lotta magic (a trademark of a Georges Méliès film) in which he makes ladies appear and disappear--all to the detriment of the story--which, is appears, is practically non-existent. Nice effects, incomprehensible story.

Le vitrail diabolique (1911) *** (out of 4) aka The Diabolical Church Window A man is sitting at his desk reading a book when a church window has some female clothes float up to it. These clothes eventually turn into a real woman so the man then tries doing some experiments on her, which causes her to turn into five women as well as various other things. This is the type of film that Melies made countless times in his career. We've had the director deal with a lot of films where someone would throw clothes on a wall (or in this case a mirror) and then a human would form. The quality of the special effects here were certainly impressive as the edits used to do them weren't nearly as obvious as some of the earlier pictures. I also enjoyed the second portion of the film and especially the sequence where the one woman turn to two then three and so on. Another major plus is that once again Melies is in front of the camera and he just seems to have so much passion that you really can't help but smile as he performs his tricks. While this isn't one of the director's strongest films there's still enough charm to make it worth viewing.