The Vanishing Lady

The Vanishing Lady (French: Escamotage d'une dame chez Robert-Houdin, literally "Magical Disappearance of a Lady at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin") is an 1896 French silent trick film directed by Georges Méliès. It features Méliès and Jehanne d'Alcy performing a trick in the manner of a stage illusion, in which D'Alcy disappears into thin air. A skeleton appears in her place before she finally returns for a curtain call. The film, shot outdoors in Méliès's garden on a platform decorated with theatrical scenery, is based on a famous stage illusion by Buatier de Kolta, in which a woman disappeared by escaping through a hidden trapdoor. However, using an editing technique known as the substitution splice, Méliès carried out the trick using cinematic special effects rather than conventional stage machinery. The substitution splice also allowed Méliès to add new material to the end of the trick, inventing the appearance and transformation of the skeleton prop and D'Alcy's return. The film, notable as Méliès's first known use of cinematic special effects, survives in film archives; a hand-colored version has also been reconstructed by a Méliès scholar.