Hugo, a hommage to silent cinema

Stars of Hugo with AutomatonStars of Hugo with Automaton

I went to see Hugo expecting more a children's adventure movie. Instead what I found was a 3D love letter to early cinema.

The movie is fine for children, though children bred on today's TV and cartoons might find the pace a bit slow. For more on the suitability of the film for children, click here.

For a list and links to the silent films that Scorcese made his hommage to, click here. I had hoped that Scorcese would include a shot from some Alice Guy film, especially since he just gave Alice Guy her posthumous award at the DGA honors event in October. Maybe a shot of Alice herself playing the husband in Sage femme du premiere classe (First Class Midwife, Gaumont, 1902), who begs "his" wife to buy a baby from the cabbage patch fairy? Or maybe a brief clip of the fairy pulling babies out of the cabbage patch from Alice Guy's first fiction film, La fee aux choux? But no such luck.

Still it's a lovely movie to watch with fantastic use of 3D. It has a "steampunk" vibe to it although there is no "Victorian sci-fi" in the film -- all the technology depicted existed at the time.