The Invention of Hugo Cabret

by Brian Selznick. 2007. Published by Scholastic Press. 534 pages.

Reviewed 20 October 2007

In my lifetime, an interesting cultural switcheroo has taken place. What happens backstage is much more interesting to us now than what happens onstage; practically every DVD comes with a compilation of interviews and outtakes detailing the process of how the film was made. Political campaign coverage focuses on fundraising and campaign logistics. It’s no longer necessary for us to suspend our disbelief; it’s not so important now that we succumb to illusions as that we are curious about how the illusion is accomplished. There’s the danger here that all this will result in a gradual death of the faculty of imagination. The wonder of tales and legends will be deflated and replaced merely with a bland, utilitarian interest in plain facts. But there’s also the hope that as viewers and readers get more interested in the processes of creativity, a new sort of legend will begin springing up, one which brings creators and audiences closer together.
“The Invention of Hugo Cabret” is a perfect example. The author’s love of silent movies is captured in the sumptuous pencil, charcoal and chalk drawings as well as in the way that the illustration and text are interspersed. At the core of this novel is a good deal of sound research into the history of the first years of cinema, the movies of Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, the Lumire Brothers and Georges Méliés. And around this core is built a narrative that incorporates all the pathos and simplicity of these old classics. The story is about an orphan boy, Hugo Cabret, who steals the inner workings from windup toys in order to rebuild an old clockwork automaton. Along the way, Hugo meets the orphaned girl Isabelle; her stepfather forbids her visiting movie houses, but still she’s fallen in love with the medium, and sneaks Hugo in to see a matinee showing. In this sequence, the narration gives way to the image of a set of heavy, tasseled curtains pulling aside to reveal an empty screen. Then we see the light of the projector come on and finally, the image of Hugo’s face, lips parted, eyes widening, the contours of his cheekbones and forehead highlighted by the reflected glow of the screen.
In this scene and in the whole book, you can almost feel the flicker of an old movie projector as it churns out the story, reel after reel after reel.