December 28 - Hugo

Today’s movie is a drama with a scene that happens on December 28. Watch it tonight and enjoy.

HUGO                               

11-year-old Hugo Cabret lives in Paris’s Gare Montparnasse railway station behind the scenes where he repairs and keeps the station’s clocks running and on time. One day “Papa Georges”, the owner of a mechanical toyshop in the station catches Hugo trying to steal parts and takes a notebook from Hugo, threatening to burn it. Hugo follows him home and persuades Isabella, George’s goddaughter to help him recover the notebook. Hugo recalls his father, a clockmaker who also worked at a museum where he found an old automaton that he and Hugo repaired. Later, when his father is killed in a fire at the museum, Hugo goes to live with his drunken Uncle at the railroad station and helps him with his job maintaining the station’s clocks. His Uncle later disappears. Papa Georges gives Hugo a chance to work for him and earn back the notebook. Hugo is terrified that if the station inspector learns Hugo has no adult supervision he will be sent to an orphanage. Hugo takes Isabella to the cinema, where he sees she has the heart shaped key needed to turn on the automaton. When they turn the key, the automaton draws a picture of a rocket crashing into the eye of the man in the moon, which is a shot from the first movie Hugo’s father ever saw, and signs the name Georges Melies. Isabella reveals this is her godfather’s real name. When the two children show the picture to Isabella’s grandmother, Mama Jeanne she says to forget it, but they investigate and find a box full of drawings, which greatly upsets Papa Georges. Hugo and Isabella go to the film academy library and learn Georges Melies was a film pioneer and meet Rene Tabard, the author of a book about Melies. Tabard had met Melies years earlier, but had believed him to be dead. The body of Hugo’s uncle is found in the river Seine. Hugo plots to bring Tabard to show Melies the one surviving film of his that is in Tabard’s possession. When he arrives, Hugo and Isabelle persuade Mama Jeanne to watch “From the Earth to the Moon” with them and are discovered by Melies. Melies recounts how he started as a magician until on December 28, 1895 [1:35:30 to 1:36:24], he attended the first Lumiere brothers’ movie showing. He started working in movies and made more than 500. Melies also developed many mechanical devices including an advanced automaton, which he later donated to a museum. Changing tastes during and after the First World War ended his movie-making career and he opened the toy store.  Hugo races to get the automaton to present to Melies as a present. Hugo is caught, escapes and is caught again by the Station Inspector. Melies arrives and asserts Hugo is now in his care, so the Inspector releases him. Tabard arranges a film festival showing 80 recovered films of Melies.  

A very good film. I like the plot where everything fits together in the end to create a unified coherent story.  A low key but effective story. One of Scorsese’s best films.

The Big Screen by David Thomson (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, New York, 2012) at page 126 gives the date of the first show by the Lumineres.

Producers - Graham King, Timothy Headington, Martin Scorsese and Johnny Depp

Director - Martin Scorsese

Awards – The film won the Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Sound Editing Oscars. The movie was also nominated for the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Costume Design and Best Film Editing Oscars at the  84^th Academy Awards.

Screenplay - John Logan

Runtime - 2 hours 8 minutes

Released – November 23, 2011

Starring –

Asa Butterfield as Hugo Cabret

Chloë Grace Moretz as Isabelle

Ben Kingsley as Georges Méliès / Papa Georges

Sacha Baron Cohen as Inspector Gustave

Helen McCrory as Jeanne d'Alcy / Mama Jeanne

Michael Stuhlbarg as René Tabard

Jude Law as Hugo's father

Ray Winstone as Claude Cabret

Christopher Lee as Monsieur Labisse

Emily Mortimer as Lisette

Frances de la Tour as Madame Emile

Richard Griffiths as Monsieur Frick

Marco Aponte as a train engineer assistant

Kevin Eldon as policeman

Gulliver McGrath as young Tabard

Angus Barnett as a cinema manager

Ben Addis as Salvador Dalí

Emil Lager as Django Reinhardt

Robert Gill as James Joyce

Copyright by Ivan Walters in 2014.