The film Gugusse et lautomate by Georges Méliès, found in an attic in the United States, is now available online.

Rediscovered and jeopardized, this 45-second film made by one of cinema’s pioneers has been slumbering in a trunk for a century.

The lost film by Georges Méliès, titled Gugusse et l’automate, was rediscovered by a retired professor in a trunk in an attic in Pennsylvania, United States.

The old wooden chest had been in the family for a century, shifting from attic to barn, from barn to garage over the generations. No one knew it contained a treasure of French cinema. No one, until Bill McFarland, a retired professor and great-grandson of a rural Pennsylvania projectionist, found old film reels that “seemed too precious to be thrown away,” he says. However, the septuagenarian “had no idea what they represented,” nor how to view them.

He first attempted to sell them to an antiques dealer, who refused upon learning that nitrate reels were highly flammable and could explode. Last summer, Bill McFarland traveled from his home in Michigan to the National Audiovisual Conservation Center at the Library of Congress, located in Culpeper, Virginia.

The film was made in 1897, two years after the Lumière brothers’ first public film screening in Paris, attended by Georges Méliès, an illusionist who later became known for experimenting with early cinema special effects.

Five years later, in 1902, Georges Méliès created A Trip to the Moon, considered one of the earliest science fiction films. He released his last film in 1913, before fading into obscurity and becoming a toy salesman in a shop at Gare Montparnasse in Paris, as the center of cinema shifted from Europe to America.

Georges Méliès was one of the “first film directors,” explains George Willeman, head of the nitrate film collection at the Library of Congress, who believes the reel found by Bill McFarland is likely a third-generation copy of the original.

Méliès’ films were victims of piracy, making him “one of the first filmmakers faced with piracy,” according to George Willeman. He also reportedly destroyed around a hundred of his negatives, with melted film stock used to make boots for soldiers during World War I.

Although Gugusse et l’automate is listed in the illusionist’s catalog, it had never been seen until Bill McFarland submitted his reels to Culpeper last September.

Georges Méliès portrays a magician turning the crank of an automaton that gradually grows before striking the magician with a blow on the head. The magician retaliates by wielding a hammer on the automaton, which then shrinks and disappears completely, thanks to editing.

“These shots are remarkably precise for such an old film, and the jokes are timeless,” marvels Jason Evans Groth, curator of animated images at the Library of Congress. According to him, this film also likely represents “probably the first appearance of a robot ever filmed.”

Bill McFarland’s great-grandfather, William DeLyle Frisbee, was born in 1860 in (eastern) Pennsylvania. In his spare time, he would leave his potato fields and beehives to travel with a state-of-the-art Edison phonograph and a magic lantern, and later on, a projector and films.

Travel tales documented in worn-out notebooks recount Willam DeLyle Frisbee’s wanderings. “I performed in Garland, five dollars in revenue, tough audience,” reads one of his journals, referring to a small town in Pennsylvania.

“I suppose on a Saturday night, they might have been a little too drunk,” imagines Bill McFarland. “Maybe there were disappointed customers, or just too noisy? Or perhaps they were excited by the images.”

A century later, the Library of Congress archivists experienced the same excitement with the reels. They kept the precious reels in a cold room designed to prevent any nitrate-related fires. The room also houses tens of thousands of films from Hollywood’s golden age.

The archivists spent a week restoring and digitizing the reel. Over time, the film had shrunk and torn, but it was still in good condition for negatives stored for years in an attic or barn exposed to the sun.