Comedian Paulus Singing (French: Paulus chantant) was a series of five French short silent films made in 1897 by Georges Méliès, starring the popular café-concert singer Paulus (real name Jean-Paul Habans, 1845–1908).
[3] The English and French release titles, as well as the Star Film Company catalog numbers, for the films were as follows:[3] Paulus, then nearing the end of his long and celebrated career as a pro-Boulangist entertainer, approached Méliès with the concept for the stunt.
[4] The series was filmed at Méliès's theater of illusions, the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris.
[2] In order to provide enough light for his film camera, Méliès included fifteen arc lamps and fifteen mercury-vapor lamps in his setup, making the Comedian Paulus Singing series the first known use of artificial light in a motion picture.
[3] The other two, which featured Paulus singing hymns of praise to the controversial political figure Georges Ernest Boulanger, were filmed for the café-concert performance but not included in the Star Film catalogs,[2] as Méliès himself was a fervent anti-Boulangist.