The Kingdom of the Fairies

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Le Royaume des fées
File:Royaume des fees.jpg
A frame from the film
Directed by Georges Méliès
Produced by Georges Méliès
Written by Georges Méliès
Starring Bleuette Bernon
Georges Méliès
Release dates
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  • September 1903 (1903-09)
Running time
 320 meters[1]
(16-17 minutes)
Country France
Language Silent

The Kingdom of the Fairies (French: Le Royaume des fées),[2][3] initially released in the United States as Fairyland, or the Kingdom of the Fairies and in Great Britain as The Wonders of the Deep, or Kingdom of the Fairies, is a 1903 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès.[1] The film is freely adapted from Biche au Bois, a popular stage pantomime that had originated at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in 1845.[4] Prints of the film survive in the film archives of the British Film Institute and the Library of Congress.[5]

Cast

Release

The Kingdom of the Fairies was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 483–498 in its catalogues.[1] (In Méliès's numbering system, films were listed and numbered according to their order of production, and each catalogue number denotes about 20 meters of film.)[7] The film was registered for American copyright at the Library of Congress on 3 September 1903.[1]

According to the Méliès scholar John Frazer, the film was "the most ambitious Star Film production to date" and "was widely distributed and heavily promoted."[4] An original film score was prepared for the film's projection in larger cities.[4] As with at least 4% of Méliès's entire output (including such films as A Trip to the Moon, The Impossible Voyage, The Rajah's Dream, and The Barber of Seville), some prints were individually hand-colored and sold at a higher price.[8]

Reception

The Kingdom of the Fairies, like Méliès's similarly spectacular films A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904), was one of the most popular films of the first few years of the twentieth century.[9] When Thomas L. Tally debuted the film at his Lyric Theater in Los Angeles in 1903 (billing it as "Better than A Trip to the Moon"), the Los Angeles Times called the film "an interesting exhibit of the limits to which moving picture making can be carried in the hands of experts equipped with time and money to carry out their devices."[10]

The film theorist Jean Mitry called it "undoubtedly Méliès's best film, and in any case the most intensely poetic."[11]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Frazer 1979, p. 118
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Malthête & Mannoni 2008, p. 148
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Solomon 2011, p. 3
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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