Cinema and the Book: Intermediality in The Invention of Hugo Cabret

• Published in: The Lion and the unicorn (Brooklyn) Vol. 42; no. 1; pp. 73 - 87
• Main Authors: Bullen, Elizabeth, Rutherford, Leonie, Urquhart, Ilona
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 2018
• Subjects: Animation; Cartoons; Childrens novels; Essays; Film adaptations; Graphic novels; Identity; Intertextuality; Literary criticism; Motion picture directors & producers; Motion pictures; Narratives; Nostalgia; Plot (Narrative); Scorsese, Martin; Selznick, Brian; Silent films; Storytelling; Technology
• ISSN: 0147-2593; 1080-6563; 1080-6563
• DOI: 10.1353/uni.2018.0005

[...]he discovers that the old man made the automaton and thus learns of his identity as Georges Méliès, a former stage illusionist and filmmaker in the early period of cinema.2 The overall aim of the narrative arc is to find a family for the orphaned boy (McLeod) and restore Méliès’ reputation and public status as the father of French cinema. According to the fictitious book Hugo discovers in the French Film Academy Library, René Tabard’s The Invention of Dreams: The Story of the First Movies Ever Made, Méliès began his career as a magician and he owned a theatre of magic in Paris. [...]the flip book and the flick book, discussed further below, form a closer comparison to the material substrate of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and the manual interaction and tactile experience of holding and playing with this toy/media hybrid. [...]Méliès’ short film, Le Livre Magique (The Magical Book 1900) combines the principles of the blow-book or flick book with cinema technology—the substitution splice or stop-motion substitution—to create the illusion of live actors emerging from a magic book. First patented by Linnet as the kineograph in 1868 and later known as “pocket cinema”—the Taschenkinematograph in Germany and cinéma de poche in France—the flip book arguably constitutes a “link between the book, the series of drawing [sic] (prefiguration of cartoons) and the animated picture, ancestor of the cinematograph” (Flipbook.info).