The hundreds of short films he directed and produced are currently being restored. Exhaustive searches are under way in film archives around the world to recover as much material as possible. In a moment of despair after his financial ruin, the filmmaker himself had set fire to piles of film stock, destroying much of his work.
Méliès had, however, enjoyed worldwide success. To distribute his productions in the United States, he had sent his brother Gaston there. Problems involving patents and customs duties had then prompted him to send negatives directly to the New World, leaving his brother to make multiple prints from them. Miraculously, some of these American negatives have been recovered! For certain shots, then, we now have two identical negatives. "Identical"? Not entirely. Méliès had simply paired two cameras to shoot his films, thus capturing two slightly different viewpoints. Everything was in place to create genuine 3D films! The pioneer of special effects might perhaps have added another invention to the long list of his innovations…
