The First Robotic Film: Watch a Newly Found Georges Méliès Movie from 1897

Metrop­o­lis, For­bid­den Plan­et, 2001: A House Odyssey, Star Wars, Blade Run­ner, The Ter­mi­na­tor, Brief Cir­cuit, Robo­Cop, Ghost within the Shell, The Iron Large, WALL‑E, Ex Machi­na: there’s a par­al­lel his­to­ry of cin­e­ma to be instructed complete­ly by means of its robots. That such a his­to­ry should start with the work of Georges Méliès could not come as a sur­prise, giv­en that he invent­ed so most of the tech­niques of sci­ence-fic­tion movie­mak­ing. However till current­ly, we did­n’t actu­al­ly know that the cin­e­ma pio­neer who “invent­ed each­factor” ever put a robotic onscreen. The evi­dence turned up amongst a col­lec­tion of “outdated and bat­tered” reels of movie that have been “from earlier than World Battle I and had been shut­tled round from base­ments to barns to garages and had simply been dropped off on the Library.”

So writes the Library of Con­gress’ Neely Tuck­er, who goes on to explain the motion of one of many movies involv­ing “a magi­cian and a robotic bat­tling it out in slap­stick fash­ion. It took a bit, however then the gasp of actual­iza­tion: They have been look­ing at ‘Gugusse and the Automa­ton,’ a long-lost movie by the icon­ic French movie­mak­er Georges Méliès at his Star Movie com­pa­ny.”

Méliès him­self performs the magi­cian, who “winds up an automa­ton dressed just like the well-known clown Pier­rot, which is stand­ing on a pedestal. As soon as wound up, the clown begins to beat the magi­cian along with his stroll­ing stick. The magi­cian retal­i­ates by get­ting an enormous sledge­ham­mer and bash­ing the automa­ton over the top, with every blow appear­ing to shrink it in half, till it’s only a small doll.”

In simply 45 sec­onds, this sim­ple movie would have aston­ished audi­ences again in 1897 — and certainly retains the pow­er to impress, professional­vid­ed you con­sid­er that not one of the tech­niques to actual­ize its results have been vast­ly identified earlier than Méliès try­ed them. He did so 5 years earlier than ‘A Journey to the Moon,’ an enormous­ly ambi­tious cin­e­mat­ic endeav­or by com­par­i­son, and by far the sin­gle movie that greatest rep­re­sents his lega­cy.’ But it and Gugusse and the Automa­ton are clear­ly the work of the identical artist-inven­tor, one who pos­sessed that uncommon com­bi­na­tion of tech­ni­cal know-how and artis­tic dar­ing, and who underneath­stood the necessity for an organ­ic rela­tion­ship between spec­ta­cle and nar­ra­tive. Not that both the spec­ta­cle or the nar­ra­tive are excessive­ly advanced at this stage, however, as Méliès could have sus­pect­ed, the cin­e­ma of robots has as lengthy an evo­lu­tion forward of it as automa­ta them­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch 194 Movies by Georges Méliès, the Movie­mak­er Who “Invent­ed Each­factor” (All in Chrono­log­i­cal Order)

How Georges Méliès A Journey to the Moon Grew to become the First Sci-Fi Movie & Modified Cin­e­ma For­ev­er (1902)

The Phrase “Robotic” Orig­i­nat­ed in a Czech Play in 1921: Dis­cov­er Karel Čapek’s Sci-Fi Play R.U.R. (a.ok.a. Rossum’s Uni­ver­sal Robots)

Fritz Lang First Depict­ed Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence on Movie in Metrop­o­lis (1927), and It Fright­ened Peo­ple Even Then

Watch “The Beginning of the Robotic,” Len Lye’s Sur­re­al 1935 Cease-Movement Ani­ma­tion

Watch the Sci-Fi Brief Movie “I’m Not a Robotic”: Win­ner of a 2025 Acad­e­my Award

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the writer of the newslet­ter Books on Cities in addition to the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly often known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.