To me, this movie is perfection.

Let's be realistic.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Once again a magician holds forth. He takes a skeleton and turns it into a young woman. He levitates her. When she turns back into a skeleton the thing begins to do a really cool dance. Soon after more women arrive and they do a dance with their wispy clothing flowing around them. There is more levitation before it's over. The animation is superb for this one.

Magician's Cavern, The (1901) *** (out of 4) aka L'antre des espritsOnce again Meiles plays a magician who turns a skeleton into a dancing woman. This is yet another magic show from the master Meiles and once again he delivers a lot of great gags and some terrific effects. The highlight of the film is when he suspends the woman in air and then walks under her to show that there's nothing there holding her up. This effect holds up quite well as does another sequence where the magician gets sucked up into the air. Credit should also go to Meiles the actor because just watching how graceful he is adds a lot of character to these films. Just when you think the film is over there are a couple encore tricks, which are very entertaining as well.

Melies is best known for his 1902 version of VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE and he worked in an enormous variety of genres -- today we would call them genres, but at the time, he was just turning out stuff to fill in at his theater and to sell to people who wanted to show movies. But he began as a stage magician and although he incorporated stage magic into his films and invented cinematic magic via cuts, masking and other method, he remained a magician to the end and this film, about two minutes in length, is the best pure example of stage magic in his surviving films. Yes, there are lots of camera tricks, but it comes out as stage magic. And, looking at recent movies about stage magicians, like THE PRESTIEGE, you begin to see how much presence the role requires -- he has it.This is one of the many previously lost or infrequently seen Melies pictures that have been made available by Serge Bromberg, David Shepherd and a myriad of other hands in the newly issued DVD set GEORGES MELIES: FIRST WIZARD OF CINEMA. Required viewing for anyone interested in the history of movies ..... and a lot of fun.