The Vanishing Lady (1897) User Reviews

Extremely familiar but very good for 1897

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 6 September 2020]

The print for "The Vanishing Lady" I found on YouTube is a tad blurry. I also noticed that the description of this film on IMDB really does NOT match the movie....it's slightly different.

In this film, Georges Méliès plays a magician...something he must have done at least a hundred times in his films. This is because before working on film making, he was a stage magician. His assistant comes out and sits in a chair. The magician pulls out a sheet and holds it across her...and she vanishes. He holds the sheet over the chair again, and a skeleton appears. He repeats this and she appears again. They then take their bows.

There is nothing in this about love or the magician unable to hold the woman. But what is there is very well done and clever for its day. Worth seeing if all too familiar.

By the way, the plot description by IMDB sounds more like it's for "The Magician" (1898)...another similar film from the master filmmaker.

The Vanishing Lady review

[JoeytheBrit · 6/10 · 22 April 2020]

Robert W. Paul movie in which a sculptor is teased by one of his female statues when it comes to life. Neat trick photography short - it feels a little less manic and rushed than similar output from Georges Melies.

The Lady Vanishes

[boblipton · 8/10 · 25 January 2022]

It's always a good day for me when I get to see a Melies film that's new to me. This one turned up on the Cinematheque Francais site. It is listed as #70 in his catalogue, and the film is preceded by a look at Melies' camera, an affair of wood and brass.

It's a standard magic trick, making a lady vanish. The sharp-eyed audience will be able to tell this is accomplished by camera trickery, rather than the sort Melies would use on the stage of his beloved Theatre Robert-Houdin. However, while making her vanish is easily accomplished, bringing her back is a more cumbersome procedure.