The inventor, proffering apologies, ushers the gentleman client to the seat, but he fares even worse: his projected portrait shows him as a hairy, monkey-like creature, gibbering maniacally.

Several other Méliès sets have similarly self-referential elements, including the photography studio in A Mix-up in the Gallery and the workshops and factories in A Trip to the Moon, The Impossible Voyage, and The Conquest of the Pole.

[2] With its photographic apparatus creating fresh and unexpected views of its subjects, Long Distance Wireless Photography can be seen as an allegory for the seemingly magical properties of cinema.

"[8] The philosopher Eugene Thacker cited Long Distance Wireless Photography as an example of his concept of dark media, "the mediation of that which is unavailable or inaccessible to the senses".

Thacker notes that the machine in the film, by generating comically altered versions of the things it is intended to photograph, "serves a kind of pedagogical function as to the inner workings of cinema itself."

[2] The film scholar François Jost agreed, describing the projection as an image "probably in reflection of [the subject's] soul" ("sans doute à l'image de son âme").