55 pages • 1 hour read
Brian SelznickThe Invention of Hugo Cabret
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: Paris in the 1930s
1930s Paris, the setting of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, was tumultuous but not without notable advancements. Nestled between WWI and WWII, this period was characterized by France’s struggle to regain its pre-WWI prosperity. While France’s economic environment dramatically improved after the war’s end, the Great Depression swept through Europe by 1931, causing a rise in poverty, unemployment, and inflation. The country’s progress in regaining economic stability was greatly diminished, leaving the country financially unstable as it entered WWII. France’s political climate was likewise unstable. Competing parties, including the Socialists, Communists, and Radicals, caused profound unrest and tension. Further, Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933 added additional strain as Europe moved closer to a second world war.
Despite this period’s economic and political turmoil, Paris experienced a significant influx of artistic creation during the 1930s. The city developed exceptional art galleries and saw an increase in architectural creativity. Paris also experienced a boom in technology and film. After WWI, Paris became a hub of creative activity, increasing the creative fervor already taking place. Americans like Ernest Hemingway lived in Paris because of its emphasis on art and its more relaxed and open-minded lifestyle.
The time period has a direct influence on the characters in the story. The invention of movies is, in essence, the catalyst for the entire plot. Georges explains how he was inspired to leave his job at his parents’ shoe factory—first to become a magician, and then to become a different type of magician: a filmmaker. He specifically names the Lumière brothers, who were real-life early filmmakers, often cited as the creators of cinema. The book includes a photo of a train from their film The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat in Part 2, Chapter 4.
The time period is also one reason Georges (in the book) abandoned cinema. Aside from the death of Isabelle’s parents, Georges cites World War I and France’s economic decline: “I made hundreds of movies, and we thought it would never end. How could it? But the war came, and afterward there was too much competition, and everything was lost. I hated telling all my employees that I couldn’t support them anymore” (405).
Historical Context: Filmmaker Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès (1861-1938) was a French filmmaker who made many technological and thematic advancements in cinema. Méliès was one of the first filmmakers to use storyboarding when planning his films, and he was especially skilled at using special effects to make them more engaging for the audience. Méliès is the background for Georges’s character in The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Many of Méliès’s drawings are featured in the book, and Selznick also references some of his films. Le Voyage dans la lune, known in English as A Trip to the Moon, plays a pivotal role in the novel’s plot. Hugo’s father discovers an automaton in a museum attic, and Hugo spends much of the book repairing the machine, unaware that it belonged to Georges (and unaware of Georges’s past, knowing him only as a toy booth owner). The automaton, once repaired, draws a picture from A Trip to the Moon: the iconic shot of a rocket crashing into the eye of the Man in the Moon. Hugo realizes that this is the same image his father once described to him when telling a story about going to the movies as a child, indicating that Hugo’s father watched A Trip to the Moon at the theatre. When the automaton signs the picture “Georges Méliès,” Isabelle, Georges’s (fictional) goddaughter, tells Hugo that that is her godfather’s name, officially linking the toy booth owner he knows to the famous filmmaker his father admired, and to the creator of his father’s beloved automaton.
Selznick stays true to Méliès’s biography, illustrating how he lived in the latter part of his life. As mentioned later in the novel, Méliès’s parents were shoemakers, but he had no interest in working for them. Instead, he sold his share of the family factory and bought the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris. Méliès also bought a movie projector and several films while visiting London and began daily showings in his theatre in Paris. He then modified the projector into a movie camera before buying a better camera and beginning his career in film. Méliès directed over 500 films of multiple genres between 1896 and 1913. The visual effects he used increased in difficulty over time, and he also introduced the use of automata in cinema. This is, of course, showcased in the novel through Hugo’s (that is, Georges’s) automaton.
Méliès’s career declined during WWI, and he was bankrupt by 1913. His theatre was torn down in 1923, so he ran a toy booth in Gare Montparnasse, just as Georges does in the novel. Méliès was rediscovered and remembered for his great work in 1924, and the book ends on this uplifting note, with Georges last appearing in Part 2, Chapter 11 at a celebration of his life and films. However, in real life, he lived in poverty until his death in 1938 at 76.
