On the Magic of Hugo

Filmmakers have always been attracted to making films about films and the history of the medium. With Hugo, Martin Scorsese, his writer John Logan and the rest of the crew may have created one of the best. There is so much to praise in Hugo, including the 3D (it is perhaps the best use of the technology to date). However, there is one feature that is especially impressive and could only be achieved by a true cine-literate and someone with absolute confident and knowledge of their craft.

As much of Hugo as possible should be a surprise, therefore without going too much into the story, the film looks at some key moments from cinema history (the Lumiere Brothers’ film of a train coming into a station, Melies Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902)) and how the audience responded to what was a completely unique medium. As can be imagined, early audience responses were those of disbelief and edge of the seat excitement. What Scorsese achieves magnificently is when he recreates these responses with a modern audience, aided in no small part by his employment of 3D.

An example: Hugo’s child protagonists are watching an early Harold Lloyd silent film, Safety Last (1923). In the clip we see, Lloyd is forced out the window of a high-rise building and ends up dangling dangerously above the street below. Even for a modern audience this scene is edge of the seat exciting. For a 1923 audience is must have appeared terrifying. Towards the end of Hugo, the titular star must hide from his antagonist by hiding out the window of a tower clock, with the streets of Paris below. In 3D the snow swirls and the streets look hazardously far away as Hugo precariously dangles from the clock hand. We find ourselves having the same reaction that a 1923 audience would have had to Harold Lloyd’s stunt and at the same time we find ourselves admiring this wonderful film for the magic that it pays homage to and creates.