An illusionist and stage magician before he turned his hand to cinema in its earliest days in belle epoque Paris, he was an extraordinary visual stylist and technician who is still much admired a century on.
Best known for the unforgettable image of a scowling celestial body annoyed that a rocket ship has crashed into its eye in A Trip to the Moon (1902), Melies was most recently seen in Martin Scorsese's film Hugo (2011) where he was played in old age by Sir Ben Kingsley.
He was born in 1861, the son of luxury shoemakers who - after attending the prestigious Lycee Louis-le-Grand, completing military service and serving an apprenticeship as a clerk in London - shunned the family business to work as a conjurer at the Theatre Robert-Houdin in Paris.
Here, Melies developed a fondness for stagecraft and visual effects, working with mechanical automata, trapdoors and lighting, eventually selling his boot factory shares to his brothers and buying the theatre outright.
After seeing the Lumiere Brothers sensational moving picture camera in action in 1895, Melies rushed out to establish his own studio and began making films that featured clever illusions and tricks created by experimenting with double exposure, cutting and rewinding, building on his theatrical innovations.
Using elaborate painted sets akin to those of Paris's music halls, Melies was a true pioneer who played a key role in the evolution of cinematic technique and the medium's storytelling grammar.
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