The lanterns could move backwards from the translucent screen, To make the images change size, Robertson used lanternsįitted with special self-focusing lenses, and mounted on large wheeled Robertson's performance was staged with the help of several magic lanternsĪnd six assistants, all hidden behind the screen, on which the images The show was a smash success - the toast of Paris. Women who had come to the show fainted in terror. Bats fluttered on the walls, ghostsĪnd goblins groaned, skeletons came hurtling toward the audience.
Gradually the figure seemed to approach, growing larger and larger, until Half-human, half-demon - appeared in the air, shimmering and ghostly. Churchīells tolled, the lightning and thunder increased, and a tiny figure. Heīegan by discussing "in scientific terms" the sensations created by thoughts The audience sat facing a screenīehind which Robertson's magic-lanterns and assistants were hidden. Dark passages decorated with mysterious picturesĪnd the bones of the dead led the audience to a catacomb hung with black The Phantasmagoria was held in an old convent that was converted intoĪ magic-lantern theater. But upon discovering the French public's appetite for the macabre in the declining years of the Revolution, he opened an elaborate ghost show in Paris in 1799.īeginnings of the Movies: The audience reacts in delighted terror at the 1799 Phantasmagoria magic-lantern show in Paris - the ancestor of today's Halloween horror movie, and our Halloween Show. At first Robertson simply gave scientific demonstrations with his lanterns. It was produced by a Belgian, E'tienne Gaspard Robert, who called himself Robertson. Though not the first such show, one of the best known of early horror shows was the Fantasmagorie ( Phantasmagoria in English) - the forerunner of our Halloween Show. "Illustrated lectures" were generally more restrained, but enormously popular, providing information about travel, science, social issues, etc. in a format that was dramatic and colorful. This is the type of show we have re-created. Just as in the melodramatic theater of the day. Sound effects, playing horns and tambourines, and clapping, cheering, and booing, ( See below.) Most lantern performance, however, used photographic slides in "illustrated lectures."Īs the slides were projected in an entertainment magic-lantern show, a live showmanĪnd musician provided the "soundtrack," and the audience joined in creating In America, the foremost magic-lanternĪrtist for these purposes was Joseph Boggs Beale. changed every 30 seconds or so, and illustrated stories and songs andĬomedy, just as the movies would later. The slides - many of them animated or capable of exotic special effects The lantern projected hand-colored slides on a full-sized screen.
Magic lantern movie#
Piece of limestone which turned incandescent once the gases were lit,Īnd produced a light as powerful as that in a modern movie projector. The limelight was created when oxygen and hydrogen were squirted on a Lanterns came in all sizes and shapes, from toy lanternsįor children, to those used in large halls - huge brass-and-mahogany,ĭouble-lens machines lit with "limelight." In large-scale halls and theaters, and as a regular part of home and publicĮntertainment.
His magic-lantern and slides on his back.īy it's heyday at the end of the 19th and the early 20th, magic-lanterns wereĮverywhere - in homes, in churches, in fraternal lodges, in schools, The Beginnings of the Movies - An early showman carries
Often these shows featured goblins and devils - hence the name the "magic lantern." By the end of the century, wandering lanternists were putting on small-scale shows in inns and castles, using a lantern lit with aįeeble candle. The magic-lantern - the first projector and one of the leading antecedants of the movies - was invented in the 1650s, probably by a prominent Dutch scientist,Ĭhristiaan Huygens. American Magic-Lantern Theater - Film History - Film History Began With The Magic-Lantern
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