{"id":6701,"date":"2026-04-01T14:35:02","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/?p=6701"},"modified":"2026-04-01T14:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:39:12","slug":"melies-povstannya-mashin-guguss-i-avtomaton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/en\/melies-povstannya-mashin-guguss-i-avtomaton\/","title":{"rendered":"M\u00e9li\u00e8s and the \u201cRevolt of the Machines\u201d: Gugusse and the Automaton \u2014 the First Film About a Robot?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The story of the film \u201dGugusse and the Automaton\u201d<\/strong> invites us to reconsider the theme of \u201dM\u00e9li\u00e8s and the revolt of the machines\u201d<\/strong>, since as early as 1897 cinema unexpectedly touched on the fear of mechanical creatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Discovery at the Library of Congress: M\u00e9li\u00e8s\u2019s Lost Film<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Not long ago, the Library of Congress made public what may be the first film about\u2026 a robot.\n(\u201cMay be,\u201d because with early cinema one can rarely speak with certainty: it resembles the excavations of Pompeii\u2014something new is always being unearthed.)\n\nThe story of the discovery, as often happens with early films, is not entirely typical, but neither is it unique. The film had long been considered lost until, in 2025, a man named Bill McFarland from Michigan brought a damaged copy for examination to the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center of the Library of Congress in Culpeper, Virginia. The reels\u2014ten nitrate films stored in rusty cans with faded labels\u2014looked anything but promising. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

McFarland\u2019s great-grandfather, William Delile Frisbie (whose name now proudly designates a collection at the Library of Congress), was a teacher and farmer in western Pennsylvania who also worked as a traveling showman and film enthusiast. In the evenings he traveled from town to town with a wagon carrying a projector and a small collection of films, astonishing local audiences with this artistic and technological novelty. After his death in 1937, two small boxes remained containing projectors, films, and notebooks. Among the reels were another film by Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s from 1900, \u201cThe Duel of the Fat and the Lean\u201d, and fragments of an early film by Thomas Edison titled \u201cBurning of the Stables\u201d. The boxes passed from generation to generation until Bill McFarland decided they deserved a proper home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one had any idea what was on those reels. Before eventually reaching an institution, they wandered from basements to barns and garages, acquiring a rather miserable appearance. One can easily imagine the reaction of the Center\u2019s staff\u2014and of McFarland himself\u2014when the discovery was finally identified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s and the Birth of Fantastic Cinema<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The film \u201cGugusse et l\u2019Automate\u201d, created around 1897 in Montreuil, France, is, unsurprisingly, a work by Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s<\/a>.\n\nThis is hardly surprising because M\u00e9li\u00e8s was the magician who transformed cinema from the cold mechanical recording of reality into a world of imagination and fantasy. Although the first narrative film is generally considered to be the Lumi\u00e8re brothers\u2019 \u201cThe Sprinkler Sprinkled\u201d, it was M\u00e9li\u00e8s who recognized the trick-based, theatrical nature of cinema and made it the foundation of cinematic language.\n\nDisappearances, transformations, sudden appearances from nowhere, seemingly simple plots that conceal deeper meanings and invite repeated interpretation \u2014 all of this belongs to M\u00e9li\u00e8s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should also remember the emergence of genre cinema. Science fiction, horror, action \u2014 all of this can already be found within the miniature one- or two-minute narratives of M\u00e9li\u00e8s\u2019s films. He might even have invented the musical if synchronized sound had existed at the time (the first experiments would appear about ten years later). Yet we already see early dance sequences in his films that sometimes structure the entire narrative \u2014 an element that later became central to the musical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Automatons: Prototypes of Robots Long Before AI<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\u041c\u0435\u043b\u044c\u0454\u0441<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And so we arrive at \u201cGugusse and the Automaton\u201d.\n\nAn automaton is essentially a precursor of robots \u2014 the term \u201crobot\u201d itself would appear only in 1920 in the play \u201cR.U.R.\u201d by Karel \u010capek. Automatons were mechanical dolls capable of performing actions of varying complexity, from clapping hands to drawing or playing chess.\n\nEspecially popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, automatons occupied their own cultural niche: as mechanical toys and as characters in literature, visual art, and theater. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edgar Allan Poe devoted an essay in 1836 to Maelzel\u2019s famous chess-playing automaton, exposing the marvel as a clever fraud. Even earlier came \u201cThe Sandman\u201d by E. T. A. Hoffmann (1816), an artistic reflection not only on fascinated yet uneasy admiration of technology that borders on magic, but also on the fragile boundary between the human and the mechanical. Hoffmann\u2019s android Olympia is far from being truly human \u2014 her human likeness appears as a disturbing imitation, an intrusion upon humanity itself \u2014 yet she manages to pass convincingly as human.\n\n\u201cThe Sandman\u201d, with its image of the fatal female android, inspired the comic ballet \u201cCopp\u00e9lia\u201d (1870) and later the opera \u201cThe Tales of Hoffmann\u201d (1881). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\u041c\u0435\u043b\u044c\u0454\u0441<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The first film adaptation \u2014 more precisely an adaptation of the ballet \u2014 \u201cCopp\u00e9lia, or the Animated Doll\u201d was created by none other than Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is therefore hardly surprising that the young art of cinema turned to the theme of the automaton \u2014 and even less surprising that the first to do so was Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A true magician of the screen, M\u00e9li\u00e8s sensed the tension between the magical aura surrounding scientific mysteries and the quasi-scientific explanations behind stage illusions. Using the technological possibilities of cinema, he enthusiastically presented both fantastical and proto-science-fiction narratives to audiences: \u201cThe Vanishing Lady\u201d, \u201cThe Hallucinating Alchemist\u201d, \u201cThe Laboratory of Mephistopheles\u201d, \u201cThe Hypnotist\u201d, \u201cThe Magician\u201d, \u201cThe Astronomer\u2019s Dream\u201d, \u201cThe Philosopher\u2019s Stone\u201d, \u201cThe Mirror of Cagliostro\u201d, \u201cModern Spiritualism\u201d, \u201cThe Spiritualist Photographer\u201d, \u201cA Trip to the Moon\u201d, \u201cThe Mesmeric Experiment\u201d, \u201cThe Eclipse\u201d, and many others.\n\n\u201cThe Automaton\u201d fits perfectly into this universe of fantasies that originated in medieval imagination, were modernized by Enlightenment ideas of progress, and were reinterpreted by M\u00e9li\u00e8s with playful irony and trick effects. Only the figure of the Golem seems missing \u2014 a character who would appear on German screens in the following decade after the Great War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M\u00e9li\u00e8s and the \u201cRevolt of the Machines\u201d: An Early Warning?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The plot is extremely simple \u2014 at first glance.\n\nThe clown Gugusse stands in a workshop filled with clocks, bellows, and tools, a space that somewhat resembles a late-medieval craftsman\u2019s workshop. Beside him stands an automaton \u2014 a child-sized Pierrot figure mounted on a pedestal.\n\nGugusse turns a crank. The figure begins to move and to grow. It grows and grows until it reaches the height of an adult man \u2014 and then begins to beat its creator.\n\nGugusse removes the figure from its pedestal, suddenly produces an enormous hammer from nowhere, and strikes the rebellious android until it begins to shrink and finally disappears. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within this one-minute narrative lies the seed of many of the key fears and ideas of the coming century related to robotics and artificial intelligence. A machine created by humans to entertain and assist escapes control and becomes dangerous to its creator, forcing him into a destructive confrontation with his own invention.\n\nHere we can already glimpse the future of \u201cMetropolis\u201d, \u201cThe Terminator\u201d, \u201cI, Robot\u201d, and even the recent \u201cPlay, Enjoy Yourself, Don\u2019t Die\u201d (where the image of an all-powerful AI is also associated with a child). Sometimes it is enough simply to inspire an image with an idea and see what emerges. It is astonishing how much meaning can be contained in an image that seems almost primitive in its simplicity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, M\u00e9li\u00e8s could hardly have foreseen the full potential of this tiny comic narrative built on transformation and slapstick conflict. Yet artistic genius and the mysterious power of intuition often depict what does not yet exist.\n\nArt becomes a kind of medium, a form of artistic spiritualism \u2014 although in saying this we risk falling into the same pseudo-scientific mysticism that M\u00e9li\u00e8s himself loved to parody. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, M\u00e9li\u00e8s and the revolt of the machines \u2014 that is, his \u201cAutomaton\u201d \u2014 can be perceived as a parody, paradoxically created before the stories it seems to parody even appeared. Humanity has long felt toward mechanical beings a mixture of fascination, distrust, and suspicion. Only afterward came reflection.\n\nCinema simply followed the same path, and today we can finally see its beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Article on Library of Congress Blogs<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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