The Man With The Rubber Head (1902)

Apr 16, 2015



The Man With The Rubber Head, or L'Homme à la tête de Caoutchouc, is a French silent film from 1902 directed by Georges Méliès. It features a scientist (played by Méliès himself) who places a living copy of his own head on a table, attaches a pair of bellows to it, and begins to blow air into the head, making it swell like a balloon. The film is a classic example of Méliès mastery of early special effects. To create the illusion of a head which grows in size, he filmed himself moving toward a stationary camera and then superimposed this upon a static shot of the laboratory where the head ballooning experiment takes place.