Soap Bubbles (film)

Soap Bubbles (French: Les Bulles de savon animées) is a 1906 French silent trick film by Georges Méliès.

Plot

With smoke from a brazier, a magician makes a woman appear in midair and slowly float to the ground. Two assistants bring in an arrangement of pedestals, onto which they lead the woman. The magician blows soap bubbles through a straw, and they appear as women's faces, floating up to join the woman posing on the set of pedestals. Next they themselves change into real butterfly-winged women, before the whole tableau disappears.

Having his assistants bring on a wide

Méliès's final trick, curling into a fetal position and disappearing into the womb of the bubble, is reminiscent of his later film The Knight of Black Art (1907), in which he disappears into a large hoop. In both cases, he returns at the end of the film to reassure his frightened assistants.^[1]

Release and legacy

Soap Bubbles was sold by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 846–848 in its catalogues.^[2] At his stage venue, the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, Méliès did a magic act between 1907 and 1910 developing the soap-bubble motif from the film. In the stage act, a ghost slept on a stool, with huge soap bubbles come out of his head as he snored. Three such bubbles floated around the stage, and three phosphorescent ghostly heads appeared inside them.^[1]

References