The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Did You Know?

• The book's primary inspiration is the true story of French filmmaker Georges Méliès, his surviving films, and his collection of automata.
• Selznick drew Méliès's real door and columns from the Montparnasse railway station in Paris.
• By 2023, the book had been translated into 13 languages.

Plot

In 1930s Paris, Hugo Cabret and his father work together fixing an automaton at the museum where his father is employed. After his father dies in a fire, Hugo’s uncle takes him to live and work at a train station, where Hugo maintains the clocks. When his uncle vanishes, Hugo keeps the clocks running alone, hiding inside the station walls and stealing food. He saves the automaton from the burned museum and tries to restore it. Later, he finds a keyhole shaped like a heart and begins searching for the key. Hugo is caught stealing from a toy booth and must give back his stolen tools and a notebook with his father’s drawings of the automaton. He follows the shopkeeper home but cannot retrieve the notebook. A girl named Isabelle promises to keep it safe. The shopkeeper, Papa Georges, makes Hugo work at the booth. Hugo and Isabelle go to a theater but get thrown out. Isabelle reveals a heart-shaped key on a necklace, and Hugo realizes it fits the automaton. He steals the key, and together they wind up the automaton. It draws a rocket lodged in the eye of the man in the Moon.

Main characters

Hugo Cabret is the 12-year-old protagonist with a talent for mechanical contraptions, especially clockworks. After his father's death, he moves to the train station and survives by stealing food and objects, though reluctantly. He is smart and determined but occasionally rude from living alone for two years. He has dirty, tousled hair and cares deeply about his father and friends. Isabelle is the second main character, adopted by her godparents Georges and Jeanne Méliès after her parents died in a car crash. Her godfather forbids her from going to the cinema, but her friend Etienne sneaks her in. She has large black eyes and is slightly taller than Hugo. Georges Méliès, once a filmmaker, made his own camera after the Lumiere brothers refused to sell him one. His most famous work, A Trip to the Moon, was the first sci-fi movie, and he pioneered special effects. In the book he is elderly, often cold and haughty. Hugo's father worked at a museum and found the automaton; he died in a museum fire. Hugo continues his father's work using his notebook. No mother is mentioned.

Secondary characters

Uncle Claude, Hugo's uncle, brought him to work on the station clocks, made him sleep on the floor, and yelled at him for mistakes. He was an alcoholic and a smoker, and was found dead at the bottom of a lake. Etienne, Isabelle's friend, sneaks her into the cinema. He lost an eye as a child playing with fireworks and later worked at the film academy library after being fired from the cinema. René Tabard, author of The Invention of Dreams, is Etienne's master at the film academy and a huge fan of Georges Méliès, having worked as his assistant director and editor. Jeanne Méliès, known as Mama Jeanne, is Georges's wife; she kept the heart-shaped key that activated the automaton until Isabelle stole it. Madame Emile appears twice: once when she discovers Hugo stealing croissants, and later when Hugo is in a fugitive cell and she believes he is telling the truth to the station inspector.

Film adaptation

Martin Scorsese secured the film rights to the book in 2007, with John Logan penning the script. Shot in 3D at London's Shepperton Studios starting June 2010, the movie Hugo hit theaters on November 23, 2011, via Paramount Pictures. Asa Butterfield starred as the title character, joined by Ben Kingsley as Georges Méliès, Chloë Grace Moretz as Isabelle, and Sacha Baron Cohen as the station inspector. Despite flopping at the box office, critics praised it, earning a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score and an 83 on Metacritic. It snagged 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and won five awards for sound, art direction, cinematography, and visual effects.