Georges Méliès was a French filmmaker in the very early days of cinema, starting in the 1890s. He’s best remembered for “The Voyage to the Moon” (“Le Voyage dans la Lune”, 1902), which people under 70 will remember as the inspiration for that one Smashing Pumpkins video.

But he was really a if not the pioneer of special effects. He used multiple exposures to create doubles of people, including himself as a one-man band. There’s also the four troublesome heads, and lots of shorts involving the devil.

While his filmmaking is inventive and his ideas are creative, his acting is…let’s say broad. Granted, this was the age of breadth on stage and in music halls. But Méliès’ acting is basically him looking at the thing he’s going to add later and going, “Sacré bleu! Can you believe what a crazy thing is happening? This is insane and impressive, right? Wow!” Which is my favorite thing about it.

He’s the summer blockbuster director of the first decade of filmmaking, churning out spectacle after spectacle, getting more and more technical, but retaining his acting style of your friend doing their Christopher Walken imitation. Imagine Steven Spielberg starring in “Jurassic Park” and just doing pratfalls and yelling about how scary the t-rex is.

Here’s a link to most of his films in chronological order on YouTube. Okay, bye.