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The Man With The Rubber Head ( 1901) Directed By Georges Méliès
About this film
The Man with the Rubber Head (1901) 'L'Homme à la tête en caoutchouc' Director: Georges Méliès he Man with the Rubber Head (French: L'Homme à la tête en caoutchouc), also known as A Swelled Head, is a 1901 French silent trick film by Georges Méliès. The film stars Méliès himself as an apothecary who blows a copy of his own head up to enormous dimensions, but who is unable to get his assistant to perform the stunt as expertly. The special effect of the inflated head, made with a novel combination of purpose-built moving equipment and multiple exposures, evokes the modern close-up and enjoys an iconic place among Méliès's works. Production: Méliès appears in the film as both the apothecary and his duplicate head. To create the illusion of the expanding head, Méliès first filmed the surrounding action on the laboratory set. Then he surrounded his head with a black background and used a specially built ramp to move himself, sitting in a pulley-controlled chair, gradually closer to the stationary camera. Using distance calculations made in advance, an assistant refocused the camera lens in real time as the head moved, so that Méliès's face would remain in focus throughout. Méliès chose…
Directors & creators
Georges Méliès
Subjects
Georges Méliès, 1901