''Rip's Dream'' (french: La Légende de Rip Van Vinckle ) is a 1905 French

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...

directed 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 ...

Plot

Production

''Rip's Dream'' is based on two sources: the original 1819 "

Rip Van Winkle "Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving, first published in 1819. It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen, imbibes their liquor and falls aslee ...

" story by

Washington Irving Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and " The Legen ...

, and the 1882

operetta Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, length of the work, and at face value, subject matter. Apart from its s ...

version of ''

'' (with music by

Robert Planquette Jean Robert Planquette (31 July 1848 – 28 January 1903) was a French composer of songs and operettas. Several of Planquette's operettas were extraordinarily successful in Britain, especially ''Les cloches de Corneville'' (1878), the length of ...

and libretto by

Henri Meilhac Henri Meilhac (23 February 1830 – 6 July 1897) was a French dramatist and opera librettist, best known for his collaborations with Ludovic Halévy on Georges Bizet's ''Carmen'' and on the works of Jacques Offenbach, as well as Jules Massenet's ...

Philippe Gille Philippe Emile François Gille (10 December 1831 – 19 March 1901) was a French dramatist and opera librettist, who was born and died in Paris. He wrote over twenty librettos between 1857 and 1893, the most famous of which are Massenet's ''Manon ...

, and

Henry Brougham Farnie Henry Brougham Farnie (8 April 1836 – 21 September 1889), often called H. B. Farnie, was a British librettist and adapter of French operettas and an author. Some of his English-language versions of operettas became record-setting hits on th ...

). Two elements, the mysterious snake and the village idiot, are Méliès's own creations. Méliès himself plays Rip. His son André appears as a village child carrying a large lantern. (Rip's friends' lanterns are in fact

Bastille Day Bastille Day is the common name given in English-speaking countries to the national day of France, which is celebrated on 14 July each year. In French, it is formally called the (; "French National Celebration"); legally it is known as (; "t ...

celebratory lanterns with the initials RF, for

République française France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area e ...

, clearly marked upon them.) Like many of Méliès's films made around 1905, ''Rip's Dream'' revels in theatricality. While some of Méliès's earlier major films, such as ''

The Impossible Voyage ''The Impossible Voyage'' (french: Le Voyage à travers l'impossible), also known as ''An Impossible Voyage'' and ''Whirling the Worlds'', is a 1904 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès. Inspired by Jules Verne's play '' Journey Thr ...

'' and ''

The Kingdom of the Fairies ''The Kingdom of the Fairies'' (french: Le Royaume des fées), 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 Fren ...

'', had experimented with innovative cinematic continuity techniques, these later films are based fully upon the storytelling traditions of the stage. According to recollections by André Méliès, the snake was a "gadget" his father had brought back from England, worked by wires and springs. The snake scene was done on a raked stage to allow the gadget's movements to be seen more clearly. Some of the ghosts in the dream sequence are actors wearing white sheets; others are

silhouette A silhouette ( , ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhou ...

s cut out of cardboard. Other effects in the film were created using

stage machinery Stage machinery, also known as stage mechanics, comprises the mechanical devices used to create special effects in theatrical productions. See also * Scenic design Scenic design (also known as scenography, stage design, or set design) is the ...

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 dissolves.

Release and reception

The film was released 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 numbered 756–775 in its catalogues, where it was described as a ''grande pièce fantastique en 17 tableaux''. For Méliès's more complex films, it was expected that a summary of the action, known as a ''boniment'', would be read aloud during projection to help viewers follow the plot. A ''boniment'' published by Méliès in 1905 for ''Rip's Dream'' survives in the archives of the

Cinémathèque Française The Cinémathèque Française (), founded in 1936, is a French non-profit film organization that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world. Based in Paris's 12th arrondissement, the archive offers ...

. A 1981 Méliès study produced by the

Centre national du cinéma Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity ...

highlighted the carefully introduced and constructed dream sequence in the film, and added that Méliès's invention of the village idiot character allows the film to move from reality to dream and back in a fluid and balanced way. Cultural historian Richard Abel called the film a "colorful forest fantasy," highlighting its overt theatricality and strong roots to the Planquette operetta. Writer and historian Thomas S. Hischak, reviewing the film's spectacular effects and deviations from Irving's original tale, concluded: "As an adaptation the movie is nonsense … but for film historians it is remarkable."

Notes

External links

* {{Georges Méliès 1900s ghost films Films about dreams Films based on Rip Van Winkle Films directed by Georges Méliès French silent short films Silent films in color Silent horror films