Fantasy is one of the oldest and most durable film genres, predating even the 20th century. Despite the range of themes and styles it has come to embrace, all of fantastic cinema can look to one man as its father: Georges Méliès. A successful stage magician in Paris during the early 1890s, Méliès was won over by cinema after he attended the premiere exhibition of the Lumière brothers' Cinématographe in December of 1895. The Lumières refused to sell him their machinery, so Méliès went to London, purchased a projector and some Edison Kinetoscope shorts, and began showing films in his stage show. By studying his projector, he was able to design a camera, and in 1896 Méliès began making his own short films, repeating the Lumières' documentary approach -- until a lucky accident revealed to him the possibilities of trick filmmaking. His camera had jammed for a few seconds while filming a street scene, and when he viewed the footage, the brief interruption caused objects and people to vanish, and new ones to materialize in their place. Acting as a magician on film, Méliès really could make people disappear! His early works in this style proved very popular, and in 1897 Méliès built Europe's first motion-picture studio and reconverted his theater for the exclusive showing of such films as Le Fakir -- Mystère Indien (1896), Le Magicien (1898), and L'Illusioniste Fin Du Siècle (1899). He became an international success in the 1900s, making scores of witty fantasies of various lengths. Sometimes he adapted fairy tales, as in Cinderella (1899) and Little Red Riding Hood (1901), but more often he followed his own imagination. For Méliès, nothing was impossible: An enormous cannon shoots scientists to the Moon in Le Voyage Dans La Lune (1902); France's president and England's king jointly dream of an underwater tunnel uniting their nations in Le Tunnel Sous La Manche (1906); an ice giant devours one of the explorers of À La Conquête Du Pole (1911).

Pole was one of Méliès' final works. His costly productions met a dwindling market as audiences grew more familiar with his techniques, and his film output ceased in 1913. His impact, however, was pervasive. England's Robert William Paul made numerous fantasies in the style of Méliès, such as Voyage To The Arctic (1903) and The ? Motorist (1906). In France, Méliès' fantastic comedy persisted in the early works of a new generation of filmmakers. Abel Gance used distorting mirrors to depict a skewed reality in his mad-doctor spoof La Folie Du Docteur Tube (1915). Rene Clair's debut film Paris Qui Dort (1923) was another amok-science tale, with Parisians frozen in the middle of their daily lives by a suspended-animation ray; Clair's Le Fantome Du Moulin Rouge (1924) and Le Voyage Imaginaire (1926) were also comic fantasies. In Germany, filmmakers were affected not by Méliès' wit but by his belief in a studio-built universe of the bizarre and impossible. The German Expressionist cinema, although most at home in the genres of horror and psychological drama, produced some memorable fantasy films. Actor Paul Wegener made them something of a specialty, right from his debut in Der Student Von Prag (1913, aka The Student Of Prague), a doppelganger story, directed by Stellan Rye. He appeared as the legendary golem, a clay statue animated by kabbalistic magic, in Der Golem (1914, aka The Golem) and Der Golem Und Die Tänzerin (1917, aka The Golem And The Dancer), both of which he co-directed; most noteworthy was his third portrayal, Der Golem (1920), which he also directed. Wegener also co-scripted Peter Schlemihl (1915) and co-directed Der Rattenfänger Von Hamelin (1916, The Pied Piper Of Hamelin), and starred in both fantasies. Director Fritz Lang and writer Thea Von Harbou created a fantasy classic with Der Mude Tod (1921), about a woman's struggle to stop Death from claiming her husband, and Siegfrieds Tod, Part One of Lang's epic Die Nibelungen (1924), highlighted by Siegfried's battle with a fire-breathing dragon. In 1920s America, fantasy still meant early Méliès, and thus was regarded as fare for children: Peter Pan (1924) with Betty Bronson, The Thief Of Bagdad (1924) with Douglas Fairbanks, Wizard Of Oz (1925) with Larry Semon. After the arrival of sound, however, all three of these properties were remade with an eye toward adult audiences.

The Wizard Of Oz (1939) was first, its fantasy being made more digestible because the film was a musical. But the songs only strengthened the fantastic characters of L. Frank Baum, who are iconically present, as the film's eternal popularity attests. The musical genre also permitted the master choreographer Busby Berkeley to drift into fantasy for some of his more elaborate production numbers, most notably in Footlight Parade (1933) and Dames (1934). Victor Herbert's operetta set in Toyland received a memorable filming with Babes In Toyland (1934), starring Laurel & Hardy. Among the non-musical fantasies of the 1930s were two Paramount releases of 1935, both starring Gary Cooper: the all-star Lewis Carroll adaptation Alice In Wonderland, in which Cooper played the White Knight, and the love story Peter Ibbetson, directed by Henry Hathaway. René Clair favored the genre once he started directing English-language films: The Ghost Goes West (1935), I Married A Witch (1942), It Happened Tomorrow (1943). Two didactic filmmakers employed fantasy as World War Two approached, featuring it in classics that protested the imminent storm. Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937) brings to life the idyllic Shangri-la of author James Hilton; in this civilization hidden among the mountains of Tibet, aging is banished and the sum of humanity's knowledge can be preserved while the world rushes toward a new conflagration. The devastating climax of Abel Gance's J'Accuse (1937, a remake of his 1919 silent) resurrects the last generation's war dead -- many played by disfigured veterans of World War One -- in its plea against another conflict.

After that conflict began, producer Alexander Korda had to relocate his film crew from England to America to complete his landmark fantasy The Thief Of Bagdad (1940), directed by Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, and Tim Whelan. This Arabian Nights tale, beloved by adults and children alike, boasts excellent special effects, a handsome early Technicolor, and lavish sets by William Cameron Menzies; the script by Miles Malleson and Lajos Biro smoothly incorporates a range of genre staples, including a djinn, evil wizard, giant spider, winged horse, and flying carpet. Fantasy-themed morality plays were also adapted in the early '40s, such as The Blue Bird (1940), the first sound filming of Maurice Maeterlinck's allegory, and a rousing version of Stephen Vincent Benet's The Devil And Daniel Webster (1941 aka All That Money Can Buy), starring Walter Huston. As the war dragged on, fantasy was pressed into service to keep up morale, and American GIs encountered helpful ghosts in A Guy Named Joe (1943) and The Canterville Ghost (1944).

After the war, fantasy films proliferated internationally. The trend resumed right after hostilities ended, with Jean Cocteau's imaginative and atmospheric La Belle Et La Bete (1946, aka Beauty And The Beast); equally striking was his Orphée (1950, aka Orpheus), a modern-day version of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. In Russia special-effects wizard/director Alexander Ptushko created such memorable works as The Stone Flower (1946), Sadko (1953), and The Sword And The Dragon (1959). Margaret O'Brien was the girl who enters a magical world in The Secret Garden (1949), the first filming of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic. Fantasy also proved useful for two Italian social satires: in Roberto Rossellini's La Macchina Ammazzacattivi (1948) a magic camera petrifies evildoers; in Vittorio De Sica's Miracolo A Milano (1950, Miracle In Milan), written with Cesare Zavattini, the abject poverty of Milanese slum-dwellers is resolved when they fly away on broomsticks. Danish filmmaker Carl Dreyer's stunning Ordet (1955) climaxes unexpectedly with the miraculous. Sweden's Ingmar Bergman personified Death for his medieval allegory The Seventh Seal (1957). In America fantasy films continued to be aim at children, as with producer/director George Pal's Tom Thumb (1958), or his later films The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm (1962) and 7 Faces Of Dr. Lao (1963).

Fantasy/adventure films also re-emerged in the 1950s. Adventure films have always been willing to punctuate their action with the fantastic, as in the Nazi-melting climax of Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981), or the occasional wizard or cyclops which turns up in the Italian sword-and-sorcery films that were launched in the late '50s. Those pseudo-mythological tales of strongmen Hercules and Maciste focus on action and violence, and so are more rightly considered adventure films -- although director Mario Bava was able to create a unique atmosphere of sustained fantasy in Ercole Al Centro Della Terra (1961, aka Hercules In The Haunted World). In American film, the stop-motion effects of Ray Harryhausen brought new life to the fantasy/adventure; Harryhausen's monster-laden, mythology-inspired films, most notably The Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad (1958) and Jason And The Argonauts (1963), rank among the most imaginative and exciting work of the genre. Other notable effects-driven fantasy/adventures include Jack The Giant Killer (1962), directed by Nathan Juran; director/producer Bert I. Gordon's The Magic Sword (1962); The NeverEnding Story (1984), directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and its sequels; director Ridley Scott's Legend (1985) with Tom Cruise; The Dark Crystal (1983), co-directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz, and Henson's solo Labyrinth (1986) with David Bowie; Walter Murch's stylish reinvention of L. Frank Baum, Return To Oz (1985), with the 11-year-old Fairuza Balk as Dorothy; and director Terry Gilliam's funny and imaginative Time Bandits (1981) and The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (1989). Dragonslayer (1981) featured dragons as monsters; the fire-breathers were friends in Dragonheart (1996), and monsters again in Reign Of Fire (2002).

Dinosaurs, nature's real-life dragons, have been an fantasy/adventure staple ever since the silent The Lost World (1925), a tour-de-force by stop-motion-effects genius Willis O'Brien. O'Brien's masterpiece was the classic King Kong (1933), where the titular giant gorilla battles dinosaurs on his home island and airplanes in New York City. Later dinosaur effects became much shakier as the budgets got lower, with rubber-suited reptiles in The Lost Continent (1951) and back-projected lizards in Irwin Allen's remake The Lost World (1960). The Valley Of Gwangi (1969) raised the level of the sub-genre, thanks to the special effects of Ray Harryhausen, but dinosaurs were huge everywhere except at the box-office until Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993). The creatures, mostly computer-generated, were so convincing that audiences could overlook the film's clumsy plotting and flat performances; they were also lucrative enough to produce the sequels The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Jurassic Park III (2001), as well as knock-offs such as Carnosaur (1993) and its sequels.

Fantasy has traveled to the afterlife as readily as it has visited dinosaur-populated islands. The treatment of devils, Satan, and Hell has became more ferocious over the years, and thus the stuff of horror rather than fantasy. Heaven, however, has proven far more approachable, and fantasy films have tended to depict it as a hierarchical power structure, patterned after a government or corporation. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Matter Of Life And Death (1946, aka Stairway To Heaven) convenes a celestial trial to decide if a pilot's soul will be taken or permitted to remain on Earth. Similar confusion over the newly deceased occurs among the heavenly bureaucrats of Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) and its remakes Heaven Can Wait (1978), starring Warren Beatty, and Down To Earth (2001), starring Chris Rock. Angels are usually seen chasing a promotion of some kind, inevitably signified by the winning of their wings, from Frank Capra's classic It's A Wonderful Life (1946) to The Heavenly Kid (1985). Germany's Wim Wenders stood this idea on its head in Der Himmel Über Berlin (1987, aka Wings Of Desire) and its sequel In Weiter Ferne So Nah (1993, aka Faraway, So Close!), which explore the angels' interest in becoming human. Tom McLoughlin's Date With An Angel (1987) looked at other human appetites of the angelic. Audrey Hepburn had her final film role as an angel in Always (1989), Steven Spielberg's remake of A Guy Named Joe. Director Alan Rudolph's Made In Heaven (1987) has scenes set Up There, as does Albert Brooks's Defending Your Life (1991). The Angel of the Apocalypse has even provided laughs, in director Raoul Walsh's The Horn Blows At Midnight (1945), starring Jack Benny, and Kevin Smith's Dogma (1999).

Of all the genres it has accommodated, fantasy has a special partner in comedy, particularly when it comes to challenging audience complacency through farcical reversals of gender or age. In A Florida Enchantment (1914), directed by and starring Sidney Drew, a magic seed initiates gender transformations. Male and female souls are swapped in Turnabout (1940), All Of Me (1984), Prelude To A Kiss (1992), and The Hot Chick (2002). Men are reincarnated as women in Goodbye Charlie (1964), directed by Vincente Minnelli, Chuck Vincent's Cleo/Leo (1989), and Switch (1991), directed by Blake Edwards. A teenage girl turns into a boy overnight in Something Special (1986), and males become pregnant in Rabbit Test (1978) and Junior (1994). Parents and children switch bodies in Freaky Friday (1977), Vice Versa (1988), and Like Father Like Son (1987). The old are rejuvenated in Kick The Can, director Steven Spielberg's episode of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983); Cocoon (1985), directed by Ron Howard; and 18 Again! (1988) with George Burns. A boy awakens to discover he's turned into an adult in Big (1988), directed by Penny Marshall. Men have also been transformed into dogs via magic (The Man Who Wagged His Tail, 1957; The Shaggy Dog, 1959; The Shaggy D.A., 1976) and reincarnation (Fluke, 1995). Writer/director Robert Downey reversed the procedure and turned dogs into people with his allegory Pound (1970).

A perennial star of fantasy films has been the North Pole's good-will ambassador, Santa Claus, ever since George Seaton's classic Miracle On 34th Street (1947), with Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle. Santa has battled extra-terrestrials (Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, 1964) and capitalists (Santa Claus, 1985); been evicted from the North Pole by actor/director Rossano Brazzi (Il Natale Che Quasi Non Fu, 1966, aka The Christmas That Almost Wasn't); received the assistance of Jim Varney's Ernest P. Worrell (Ernest Saves Christmas, 1988); and been remade by writer/producer John Hughes (Miracle On 34th Street, 1994). Tim Allen has even turned into Santa in The Santa Clause (1994) and Santa Clause 2 (2002). Christmas has also brought out the fantasist in filmmakers with the numerous adaptations of Charles Dickens' classic ghost-filled novella "A Christmas Carol" -- most notably with the Ebenezer Scrooges of Alastair Sim, in the 1951 film directed by Brian Desmond-Hurst, and George C. Scott, in the 1984 version helmed by Clive Donner.

Other magical beings of legend have also populated fantasy films. Vittorio De Sica was the helpful djinn in La Meraviglie Di Aladino (1962, aka The Wonders Of Aladdin), co-directed by Henry Levin and Mario Bava. Genies grant wishes to humans in The Brass Bottle (1964), directed by Harry Keller; Bruno Corbucci's Superfantangenio (1986); Wildest Dreams (1990), produced and directed by Chuck Vincent; and Miracle Beach (1992), directed by Scott Snider. Leprechauns help out their friends in The Luck Of The Irish (1948), directed by Henry Koster; the Disney production Darby O'Gill And The Little People (1959), directed by Robert Stevenson; and the musical Finian's Rainbow (1968), directed by Francis Coppola. They also commit mass murder in the series of horror tales launched by writer/director Tom Holland's Leprechaun (1993). Photographers capture fairies on film in the 1997 fantasies Fairy Tale: A True Story, directed by Charles Sturridge, and Nick Willing's Photographing Fairies.

International films of the 1960s and '70s saw something of a decrease in fantasy -- with of course some notable exceptions. In Teorema (1968) and Il Fiore Delle Mille E Una Notte (1974, aka Arabian Nights) Pier Paolo Pasolini combined miracles and magic with social and sexual politics to indict a consumer class that has lost its soul. India's Satyajit Ray created a funny and charming children's fantasy with Goopy Ghyne Bagha Byne (1969, aka The Adventures Of Goopy And Bagha). Richard Lester directed the British satire The Bed Sitting Room (1969), in which survivors of a nuclear war mutate into a parrot, a dog, and the eponymous flat. Ken Russell injected memorable fantasy sequences into his biopics The Music Lovers (1970) and Mahler (1974). Writer Roald Dahl adapted his classic children's book "Charlie And the Chocolate Factory" for the musical Willy Wonka And the Chocolate Factory (1971), starring Gene Wilder; Wilder also starred with Zero Mostel in Rhinoceros (1974), director Tom O'Horgan's version of the celebrated absurdist play by Eugène Ionesco. Jacques Demy wrote and directed the fairy tales Peau D'Ane (1971, aka Donkey Skin) and The Pied Piper Of Hamelin (1972). The first American/Soviet co-production was director George Cukor's remake of Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird (1976). The 1980s, however, saw a renewed interest in the genre, as the list of fantasy/adventures cited above suggests, and it has continued to grow ever since. A girl encounters an immortal family in Tuck Everlasting (1980), from the novel by Natalie Babbitt. Director Tim Burton had Winona Ryder encounter Michael Keaton as a manic ghost Beetle Juice (1988) and Johnny Depp as the blade-fingered Edward Scissorhands (1991). The American pastime, baseball, was imbued with fantasy in The Natural (1984), starring Robert Redford; Field Of Dreams (1989), starring Kevin Costner; and the remake Angels In The Outfield (1994). Producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globusmade a string of fairy tales, American/Israeli co-productions, in 1987: Snow White, Red Riding Hood, The Emperor's New Clothes. Italian actor/director/writer Maurizio Nichetti was sucked into a televised neo-realist film in his satire Ladri Di Saponette (1988, aka The Icicle Thief); the tube proved equally absorbing for John Ritter and Pam Dawber in Stay Tuned (1992). Fantasy films even caused cinema itself to question its own identity, with crossovers between real life and reel life in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose Of Cairo (1985) and Last Action Hero (1993) with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Animation and live action commingled in the landmark Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), with detective Bob Hoskins aiding the set-up cartoon hare; Volere Volare (1992), in which Maurizio Nichetti turns into a cartoon; and Space Jam (1996), where Michael Jordan plays basketball with Bugs Bunny.

By the 1990s, cinematic fantasy was experiencing a renaissance. Woody Allen's Alice (1990) offered a dose of Lewis Carroll to the problems of a contemporary woman from New York City. Director Steven Spielberg returned to Sir James Barrie with Hook (1992), starring Robin Williams, and reinvented Peter Pan as the inner child that all adults need to preserve. Williams also starred in the effects-driven Jumanji (1995), as a man trapped inside a board game, and Barry Levinson's Toys (1992), in which a toy factory is transformed into a militaristic nightmare. Toy soldiers become a militaristic nightmare in Small Soldiers (1998), directed by Joe Dante. Toys come to life more benignly in the 1995 films The Indian In The Cupboard, directed by Frank Oz, and Tin Soldier, directed by its star Jon Voight. Steve Barron's The Adventures Of Pinocchio (1996) adapted the Carlo Collodi classic about a wooden puppet that wants to be a human boy. Frances Hodgson Burnett was filmed again with The Secret Garden (1993), directed by Agnieszka Holland, and A Little Princess (1995), directed by Alfonso Cuaron. Sally Potter adapted Virginia Woolf for the transgender fantasy Orlando (1993), with Tilda Swinton. Irish folklore inspired John Sayles' The Secret Of Roan Inish (1994). Mary Norton's beloved tales of little people were filmed in 1994 and again in 1997 as The Borrowers. A family heritage of sorcery is celebrated in the 1998 films Practical Magic, directed by Griffin Dunne, and The Effects Of Magic, directed by Chuck Martinez. Michael Keaton is transformed into a snowman in Jack Frost (1998). Wildest of all was the stylish and intelligent Being John Malkovich (1999), directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charles Kaufman, in which a small doorway in a kooky office building leads directly into the mind and life of actor John Malkovich!

In the 21st century, magic has become magic at the box office with two smash-hit fantasy/adventure series. New Zealand writer/director Peter Jackson struck gold with his Tolkien adaptation The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001) and its follow-ups The Two Towers (2002) and The Return Of the King (2003). J.K. Rowling's beloved boy wizard Harry Potter came to the screen with resounding commercial success in director Chris Columbus's Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone (2001, aka Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone) and Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets (2002). Other recent fantasy films include writer/director Tim Disney's A Question Of Faith (2000, aka Blessed Art Thou), about a monk whose encounter with the angel Gabriel turns him into a pregnant woman; Walt Disney Pictures' return to Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting (2002); Back To The Secret Garden (2000), director Michael Tuchner's return to Burnett; and Pinocchio (2002), Italian actor/director Roberto Benigni's return to Collodi. The role of fantasy can be expected to increase as the special-effects technology of film and video becomes more sophisticated over the 21st century; the audience devotion to fantasy will certainly continue to flourish right along with it.