Trailer
Plot summary
After his father dies in a fire, twelve-year-old Hugo Cabret goes to live with his uncle Claude, who tends the clocks at the Gare Montparnasse in 1931 Paris. When Claude disappears, Hugo keeps the clocks running himself, afraid that Station Inspector Gustave Dasté will send him to an orphanage if he learns the boy is alone. From his hiding place in the station walls, Hugo steals parts to repair an automaton his father found and left unfinished, a mechanical man that draws with a pen and needs a heart-shaped key. Caught taking pieces from a toy stall, Hugo is made to work for its owner, Georges, whose goddaughter Isabelle befriends him and carries a key of her own.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hugo (2011)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Hugo was Martin Scorsese's first film shot in 3D; he said he found the format interesting because the actors were more upfront emotionally and their slightest move or intention was picked up much more precisely.
- The automaton in Hugo was designed after Maillardet's automaton, built by Swiss watchmaker Henri Maillardet, which Brian Selznick saw at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, as well as the Jaquet-Droz automaton known as "the writer".
- The film leaves out Méliès' two children, his brother Gaston, who worked with him, and his first wife Eugénie, and shows him married to Jeanne d'Alcy while he was making films, though in reality they did not marry until 1925.
- Hugo depicts the Montparnasse derailment, when at 4:00 pm on 22 October 1895 the Granville-Paris Express overran the buffer stop at the Gare Montparnasse terminus.
