The Devil in a Convent
A 1899 Méliès trick film set in a convent.
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The Devil in a Convent, a French silent trick film from 1899, was directed by Georges Méliès and released in the UK as The Sign of the Cross, or the Devil in a Convent. It is an early example of Méliès's work in the trick film genre.
Release
The Devil in a Convent, catalogued as numbers 185 through 187 by Méliès's Star Film Company, was divided into three scenes: the nuns and the sermon, the demons and the sabbath, and the clergy performing an exorcism. In 2010, the Cinémathèque Basque received a donation of a box of 35mm films that a private individual had pulled from a Bilbao garbage bin back in 1995. Inside were 32 films, among them hand-colored prints of The Devil in a Convent and another Méliès short from 1899, The Mysterious Knight.
Until then, only black-and-white versions of these two films were known. The hand-colored copy of The Devil in a Convent had decayed too badly for a full restoration, but its third scene was salvageable. Both films were handed over to the Filmoteca de Catalunya for restoration work, overseen by Méliès experts Roland Cosandey and Jacques Malthête.
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More in French Silent Horror Films
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: The Devil in a Convent (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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