''D. Devant, Conjurer'' (, also known as ''Devant's Hat Trick'') was a 1897 French short

silent film A silent film is a film without 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, w ...

Georges Méliès Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès ( , ; 8 December 1861 – 21 January 1938) was a French magic (illusion), magician, toymaker, actor, and filmmaker. He led many technical and narrative developments in the early days of film, cinema, primarily in th ...

, starring the magician David Devant. Devant, a major stage illusionist based in London, was an early proponent of moving pictures, introducing them into the magic performances he did with John Nevil Maskelyne at the

Egyptian Hall The Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, was an exhibition hall built in the ancient Egyptian style in 1812, to the designs of Peter Frederick Robinson. The Hall was a considerable success, with exhibitions of artwork and of Napoleonic era re ...

and taking them along to private performances and on tour. He knew Méliès in London as well as in Paris, where Devant often went to get new films. It was Devant who, in 1896, sold Méliès a film projector made by the British pioneer Robert Paul. The year appearing for Méliès's camera, Devant had also been filmed by Paul, and Devant would later go on to try filmmaking on his own. ''D. Devant, Conjurer'' was sold by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 101 in its catalogues. In Britain, the Philipp Wolff Company also sold it, under the title ''Devant's Hat Trick''. The complete film is currently presumed lost. However, a flipbook showing a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, published by Léon Beaulieu in the late 1890s, was rediscovered in the 2010s and has been tentatively identified as a fragment of the film. Two of Devant's films for Paul appear to survive in a very similar fragmentary format, as short sequences for flipbook-like devices.

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Flipbook
on

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, tentatively identified as a fragment of ''D. Devant, Conjurer'' {{Authority control 1890s French films French black-and-white films Films directed by Georges Méliès French silent short films Films about magic and magicians 1897 short films