''Dislocation Extraordinary'' (french: Dislocation mystérieuse), also known as ''Extraordinary Illusions'', is a 1901 French silent trick film by

Georges Méliès Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès (; ; 8 December 1861 – 21 January 1938) was a French illusionist, actor, and film director. He led many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. Méliès was well known for the use of ...

. It was sold by Méliès's

Star Film Company The Manufacture de films pour cinématographes, often known as Star Film, was a French film production company run by the illusionist and film director Georges Méliès. History On 28 December 1895, Méliès attended the celebrated first publi ...

and is numbered 335–336 in its catalogues.

Production and themes

The film is one of many in which Méliès plays with the idea of living body parts separated from their body; living dismembered limbs had been a feature of stage magic for some time, notably in the work of Nevil Maskelyne, one of Méliès's major influences. For ''Dislocation Extraordinary'', Méliès combined this stage-magic tradition with the

stock character A stock character, also known as a character archetype, is a fictional character in a work of art such as a novel, play, or a film whom audiences recognize from frequent recurrences in a particular literary tradition. There is a wide range of st ...

of Pierrot, a

commedia dell'arte (; ; ) was an early form of professional theatre, originating from Italian theatre, that was popular throughout Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries. It was formerly called Italian comedy in English and is also known as , , and . Charact ...

character. The character had been familiar in Méliès's France since

Jean-Gaspard Deburau Jean-Gaspard Deburau (born Jan Kašpar Dvořák; 31 July 1796 – 17 June 1846), sometimes erroneously called Debureau, was a Bohemian-French Mime artist, mime. He performed from 1816 to the year of his death at the Théâtre des Funambule ...

's revival of commedia techniques in the first half of the 19th century. The special effects were carried out with

substitution splice The substitution splice or stop trick is a cinematic special effect in which filmmakers achieve an appearance, disappearance, or transformation by altering one or more selected aspects of the mise-en-scène between two shots while maintaining th ...

s and multiple exposures, aided by a black cloth background. The film's Pierrot is played by

André Deed Henri André Chapais, known as André Deed (22 February 1879 – 4 October 1940), was a French actor and director, best known for his Foolshead comedies, produced in the 1900s and 1910s. André Deed was one of the first named actors in cinema, a ...

, a music-hall acrobat. He worked with Méliès for some years, leaving in 1904 when he was hired by

Pathé Pathé or Pathé Frères (, styled as PATHÉ!) is the name of various French people, French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest ...

, to whom he revealed some of Méliès's secrets for special effects. Deed's later work includes the ''Cretinetti'' (Foolshead) series. Méliès returned to ''Dislocation Extraordinary''s "free-floating limbs" in 1903, when he featured them again in his film '' The Infernal Cakewalk''.

Release

The film's title for English-language markets was ''Dislocation Extraordinary''; however, Méliès scholar John Frazer, confusing it with a later Méliès film, referred to it as ''Extraordinary Illusions''. The latter title is also used for the film on at least one home video release.

References

{{Authority control French black-and-white films Films directed by Georges Méliès French silent short films Trick films