There is so much more history to tell about George M\u00e9li\u00e8s,\u00a0but that is best reserved for a more extended medium<\/a>. The vital part of the story is that many of his films were lost, their celluloid melted down and recycled. Only about 300 of his 500 films survived. His story was told in Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo.”<\/a><\/p>\n According to a new update from the Library of Congress<\/a>, one of M\u00e9li\u00e8s’\u00a0films has been rediscovered, however. “Gugusse and the Automaton” was recently dropped off at the Library. It may be the earliest depiction of a robot on film.<\/p>\n Read more: 10 Best Sci-Fi Books Of All Time, Ranked<\/a><\/p>\n George M\u00e9li\u00e8s’ 1897 film Gugusse and the Automaton may feature film’s first robot Gugusse smashing a robot with a hammer in Gugusse and the Automaton – Library of Congress<\/p>\n It should be noted that the term “robot” wasn’t even coined until the publication of\u00a0Karel \u010capek’s 1920 play “R.U.R.,” which, in the play, stands for “Rossum’s Universal Robots.” Prior to that, however, there were plenty of human-shaped automatons that were being constructed as far back as Ancient Greece. As entertainment, automata were included in the acts of stage magician\u00a0Jean-Eug\u00e8ne Robert-Houdin (the magician from whom Ehrich Weiss\u00a0took his stage name, “Harry Houdini”). Because Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s was also a magician, he likely had seen Robert-Houdin’s automata and was familiar with them as a form of entertainment.<\/p>\n M\u00e9li\u00e8s’ newly discovered film, which can be seen on the Library of Congress website, features a character named Gugusse who turns a crank on a large box, causing a robotic automaton (played by a human actor) to begin moving. The automaton transforms from a boy into a taller adult. Gugussed pulls the automaton down from the box, extracts a large comedic mallet, and mashes it over the head. With each thwack, the automaton shrinks, becoming a child again. He goes a few thwacks too far, however, and causes it to shrink into a small statue, and finally into nothing.<\/p>\n M\u00e9li\u00e8s loved to use editing to cause a magical effect. The transforming automaton mutates from one actor to another in the blink of an eye. He was riffing on a magician’s use of automata in their stage acts, and posited, with film’s magical qualities, what would happen if an automaton act didn’t work out well. What if you, as a magician, made it grow by mistake? The humor and wit of Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s are undeniable.<\/p>\n How the film was discovered Gugusse with a boy-sized automaton in Gugusse and the Automaton – Library of Congress<\/p>\n The discovery of “Gugusse and the Automaton” is described on the Library of Congress website, and a video from the Library’s nitrate film vault was posted on its Instagram account<\/a>. The film was donated by one Bill McFarland, a citizen of Grand Rapids, Michigan, who drove a box of old prints to the Library’s branch in Virginia. It seems that McFarlane’s great-grandfather,\u00a0William Delisle Frisbee, was a schoolteacher and farmer who moonlit as a stage magician and entertainer. Frisbee would, in the years before World War I, sell tickets to tech shows where he would dazzle audiences with his film projector and his equally novel phonograph. It seems that\u00a0M\u00e9li\u00e8s’ movie has made its way into Frisbee’s collection.<\/p>\n When the Librarians opened up McFarland’s box, the reels were aged and stuck together. Readers should also recall that nitrate film stock is incredibly fragile and incredibly, incredibly flammable; one can light nitrate film on fire and throw it into a swimming pool, and it will continue to burn. The Library, in a very careful and controlled fashion, examined the print and found that “Gugusse” was a copy of a copy. But it was the first time anyone had likely seen the film in over a century.<\/p>\n And, because it depicted an automaton, it may be a significant artifact in the history of science fiction. We have now taken a glimpse at cinema’s first proper robot.\u00a0M\u00e9li\u00e8s was always drawn to sci-fi and fantasy, so if anyone was going to depict a robot on film, it was going to be him.\u00a0The first robot, as modern audiences might describe it, appeared in the 1919 serial “The Master Mystery.”<\/a><\/p>\n It may be time for \/Film to update our list of the 25 best movie robots<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you’re looking for the easiest way to keep up with all the major movie and TV news, why not sign up to our free newsletter<\/a>? You can also add us as a preferred search source<\/a> on Google.<\/p>\n![\"Gugusse](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/39b07e63ac85e9c030027bab79bc3086.jpeg\"\/)
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