A long-lost film by French cinema pioneer Georges Méliès has been identified within a cache of vintage reels donated to the U.S. Library of Congress. The 45-second silent short, titled "Gugusse and the Automaton," was discovered inside a battered wooden trunk that had been passed down through generations of a Pennsylvania family.
Bill McFarland, a 76-year-old retired teacher from Michigan, served as the trunk's custodian for two decades. The collection originally belonged to his great-grandfather, William DeLyle Frisbee, who toured rural Pennsylvania showing silent movies at the turn of the 20th century.
"It was just this trunk of films that seemed too good to throw away," McFarland told AFP. "But I had no idea what they were or how to show them."
McFarland’s attempts to find a home for the collection were initially met with caution. Antique dealers warned him that the vintage nitrate film reels were highly combustible and posed a significant fire hazard. Last summer, he brought the collection to the Library of Congress’ National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, to determine their value.
A rare piece of film history
Archives staff discovered the Méliès film spliced into the middle of one of the 10 reels. Produced in 1897, the short film emerged just two years after the Lumière brothers held the world’s first public movie screening in Paris. Experts believe the recovered reel is a third-generation copy of the original.
Méliès, a magician and theatrical showman who later gained international fame for "A Trip to the Moon" (1902), was among the first directors to utilize special effects and fictional narratives. George Willeman, leader of the library’s nitrate film vault, noted that the find provides a rare glimpse into the early days of the industry.
"He was one of the first filmmakers," Willeman said. "And one of the first to experience film piracy."
Though Méliès eventually faded from public view and ended his career selling toys at a Paris train station, his influence on the medium remains foundational. The recovery of "Gugusse and the Automaton" adds a previously unknown chapter to the catalog of a man who helped transform early cinema from a novelty into a narrative art form.
