Gaston Velle, “Métamorphoses du Papillon (The Butterfly’s Metamorphosis)”, 1904,  Silent Hand-Colored Nitrate Film, Running Time Two Minutes, Pathé Frères, Collection of the AMCI 

Born in Rome, Italy in 1868, Gaston Velle was a French silent film director and a pioneer in the field of special effects. He was a prominent figure in both French and Italian cinema in the early twentieth-century.

Gaston Velle was the son of Hungarian entertainer Joseph ‘Rrofessor’ Velle, a magician who traveled throughout Europe preforming for the nobility. He began his career as a traveling magician; however when the opportunity presented itself, he entered the developing world of cinematography where he employed his illusionist skills. Velle worked under the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis Jean, who were using the newly patented Cinematograph system to make short silent films. Velle nest served as the head of production for the Italian studio Società Italiana Cines, both a producer and distributor of films.

Velle created more than eighty films between 1903 and 1911. He is best known for those works produced at Pathé Frères, a business founded by the four Pathé brothers in 1896. By the early 1900s, this company developed into the world’s largest film equipment and production company, as well as, a major producer of phonographs and their cylinder and disc records. Velle produced for Pathè short films designed to feature special effects; these were intended to rival those of film director Georges Méliès, France’s leading pioneer of special effects films. 

One of Gaston Velle’s earliest directorial works was the 1904 short silent crime film “Les Devaliseurs Nocturnes (Night Burglars)”. Some of Velle’s films pioneered techniques which have been used by others over the years. His 1906 “Les Invisibles” is the first known invisible man film. Valle also created some of the first Féerie films known for their fantasy plots, visual effects and lavish scenery. These films used a fairy-tale design to combine theater with dance, mime and acrobatics.

Velle collaborated with other directors on film projects, including Spanish director Segundo de Chomón, who previously did the cinematography on Velle’s “Night Burglars”, and French director Ferdinand Zecca, who as a Pathé director set up the Pathé pavilion at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. Among these collaborative efforts were such silent film classics as the 1905 “Réve à la Luna (The Moon Lover)”, the 1906 “L’ecrin du Rajah (The Rajah’s Casket)” and the 1905 “La Poule aux Oeufs d’Or (The Hen Who Laid the Golden Egg)”. Director Martin Scorsese inserted “La Poule aux Oeufs d’Or”  into his 1997 Academy Award nominated film “Kundun”. 

Gaston Velle retired from the film industry in 1913. There is little information available about the last decades of his life. He still remained part of a prominent cinematic family as his son Maurice Velle, a cinematographer, married and had a family with screenwriter Mary Murillo. Gaston Velle died in Paris on the eighth of January in 1953 at the age of eighty-five. 

Gaston Velle’s 1904 “Métamorphoses du Papillon (The Butterfly’s Metamorphosis)” is a hand-colored, silent nitrate print film with a running time of less than two minutes. The film follows a caterpillar’s change into a butterfly which later morphs into a female dancer. It is currently housed in the collection of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, ACMI, at Federation Square in Melbourne. Additional information, as to cinematographer and the actress portraying the dancer, is not known. The full length film can be seen on several online venues including YouTube.  

Second Insert Image: Gaston Velle, “Voyage Autour d’Une Étoile (Voyage Around a Star)”, 1906, Short Silent Film, Pathé Frères

Bottom Insert Image: Gaston Velle, “La Poule aux Oeufs d’Or”, 1905, Short Silent Film, Pathé Frères