Great Directors and Magic

By Alexander the Great Magician

Many magicians have also risen to fame within Hollywood as directors. It seems that there is some sort of common link between magic and film since I also chose to study Film at Carleton University even though I have been doing magic for over 15 years. The famous filmmaker Orson Welles was a magician and also the turn of the century filmmaker Georges Méliès. M. Méliès directed the "Trip to the Moon" short film that was seminal to fiction film.
As a filmmaker he filmed one of the earliest motion pictures, made around 1900, of a cigarette vanish act. He was the owner of the Theatre Robert-Houdin in Paris. He performed there between 1914 and 1918 and I most recently read up on him in the introduction to a manipulation book that I have been studying this spring.
Recognition of his work came late in his life, well after his work in magic and in film. Most of his films, sketches and paintings were saved late in his life and can now be seen at the New York Museum of Modern Arts.