Méliès wants to buy the camera of the Lumière brothers immediately but Antoine does not want to sell. No future, he would have said for this invention. He then leaves for London to buy William Paul his invention, the Animatographe, which he adapted and transformed into Kinetograph, his first camera of shooting.

Méliès immediately goes on to launch, as of april 1896, on simple subjects: the street, the sea, the family... He put his mark on the Black Star: the "star film" and produced his first films for his theater "The Retraction of a lady at Robert-Houdin".
Very soon Méliès discovered his first tricks and invented the “cinema spectacle” conceived as numbers of shows of illusions.
From 1897, the changes of light during the day and the weather led him to build the first film studio in his property of Montreuil.

From 1897 to 1912, Méliès realizes almost 520 films that are both poetic, fantastic, humorous, the first reports, the first historical or political films, the first advertisements...
He imagines scenarios, he creates new technical processes, he develops the stop trick, multiple exposure, time-laps, dissolves, fades, split screens, dolly shots,… the use of caches and models. He invents and exercises all the professions of cinema and applies to his films methods and processes of shows of Robert-Houdin Theater which are today the fundamental of cinema.

An Artisan using his own financial resources, he finds himself very soon faced with a double challenge: competition from new comedic or realistic genres that appeal to the public and the industrialization of cinema on both sides of the Atlantic.

Gaumont and Pathé moved into the film landscape. Pathé controls 50% of the distribution in Europe and America. The films are no longer sold but are now rented to the meter regardless of the cost of production. Eastman controls the price of film, Rockefeller supports Edison and bank Morgan shoulders the Biograph.
The films of Méliès are victims of plagiarism especially his greatest success “ A trip to the Moon” (1902) that is why Georges sends his brother Gaston from 1902 in New York to defend his interests and founded the ' Geo Méliès Star films manufacturing '. The diffusion of his films in the USA and those of his brother Gaston assures him still some income but his financial situation becomes critical.
In 1913 he turned his last film which did not meet the expected success. He closes his two studios.

In 1914, due to war, the Robert-Houdin Theater closes its doors.
He then turns the studio ' B ' of Montreuil into a variety theater. He interprets, with his children (Georgette and André) and many artists more than 100 different roles between 1917 and 1922.
In 1923, he sells his property of Montreuil, all his films were destroyed or sold.
He remarried in 1925 with Jehanne d’Alcy, a former artist of the Robert-Houdin Theater. She is the manager of a toys store at the Gare Montparnasse. In order to survive, Méliès must accept the trade of toy sellers and sweets, 14 hours a day and 7 days a week.

And the world of cinema forgets him... Until 1929, when journalists rediscovere him and organize a gala in his honour in Salle Pleyel. In 1931, Georges Méliès receives the Legion of Honour from the hands of Louis Lumière at the Claridge at a banquet of 800 covered.
He will end his days from 1932 to 1938 with his wife and grand daughter, Madeleine, of which he is responsible, at the Orly Castle, new place of retirement of the mutual of cinema, which he is the first and only resident.

He dies in Paris on 21 January 1938 and was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.