Méliès was a stage magician, and owner of Robert-Houdin Theater in Paris.
Méliès was fascinated by the early movies but had ideas on how to improve them.
He made the first films that told a full story with beginning, middle, and end.
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So, what was the Robert-Houdin Theater... or better yet, who was Robert-Houdin? Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, (1805-1871) was the man who, probably more than any other, created what we now think of as stage magic. Of course magical illusions have existed since antiquity but they were folk entertainments. Robert-Houdin dressed elegantly and performed beautiful illusions on stage for bourgeois and upper class audiences. He was the son of a watchmaker and apprenticed in watchmaking. Many of his illusions rely on clockwork. In 1845 he opened his first theater at the Palais Royal in Paris. After a slow start, he became very successful and in 1851, moved his theater to another Paris location. He operated the theater until his death. It then passed through a series of owners, eventually ending up in the hands of Méliès. So, Méliès was operating in Robert-Houdin's actual space. Much of what we know about Robert-Houdin and his illusions comes from memoir and instruction books he wrote. One of the people who read and loved those books was Erich Weisz (1874-1926), a Hungarian teenager, the son of a rabbi, who, inspired by his reading, changed his name to Harry Houdini and went on the become one of the best known performers of the early 20th century. His name is still recognizable almost a century after his death. One of Robert-Houdin's best known illusions was The Magical Orange Tree. You can see it performed by the English magician Paul Daniels (1938-2016) below.