Unwinding the film spool: Hugo, Méliès, and our return to early film

Taking Martin Scorsese's Hugo (2011) as a case study, this article explains that early film is misleadingly framed in terms of a simple non-fiction/fiction binary. The author argues that early non-fiction Lumière film instead gives evidence of choreographed performance just as Méliès' magical works document the satiric and often critical humour of the French Incoherent movement. Rather than dismiss Hugo, however, the author suggests that these themes and critical concerns have been cleverly re-located and absorbed by Martin Scorsese into the choreography, performance and humour of Hugo itself.