From the New Yorker. Illustration by John Ritter.
“Hugo” is superbly playful. Scorsese stages the moment in 1896 when, at least according to legend, Méliès’s rivals, the Lumière brothers, showed a film of a train rushing toward the camera and sent the audience scrambling. Just the year before, a train had actually crashed through the passenger area at Gare Montparnasse and sailed out into the street. In “Hugo,” the hero has a terrifying dream, perhaps an unconscious recollection of that event. Reality, filmed illusion, and dreams are so intertwined that only an artist, playing merrily with echoes, can sort them into a scheme of delight.
