Segundo Víctor Aurelio Chomón y Ruiz (17 October 1871 – 2 May 1929) was a pioneering Spanish film director. He produced many short films in France while working for Pathé Frères and has been compared to Georges Méliès, due to his frequent camera tricks and optical illusions. He is regarded as the most significant Spanish silent film director in an international context.

Biography

Born in Aragon (Spain), Segundo de Chomón reportedly got into film through the efforts of his actress wife, Julienne Mathieu, who appeared in early Pathé Frères productions. Around 1900 he became an agent for Pathé Frères in Spain, publicizing and distributing their films out of Barcelona. In 1901, De Chomón began producing actuality films in Spain on an independent basis and distributing them through Pathé; his first trick film was Gulliver en el país de los gigantes (1903). De Chomón also specialized in producing stencil colored film prints and was one of the developers of the Pathéchrome process, patented by Pathé in 1905. Charles Pathé also noted the quality of De Chomón's trick films and, from 1903, began to support these efforts with the desire of competing with Georges Méliès. De Chomón was expert enough at making trick films and had proven himself so valuable to Pathé that in 1905 he and Mathieu moved from Barcelona to Paris, and De Chomón was placed in charge of a color stencilling shop in addition to his periodic duties as a director. Through 1907, De Chomón worked in close collaboration with Pathé's top director, Ferdinand Zecca; the partnership worked so well that in 1907 Zecca selected De Chomón to co-direct a major project, the remake of Zecca's own 1903 Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ. Shortly afterward, Zecca moved into an executive position at Pathé and did little direction from that time; De Chomón's most productive years as a filmmaker lasted from 1907 to 1912, a period during which Méliès' production went into a steep decline. De Chomón often worked with other directors; in addition to Zecca he collaborated with Gaston Velle, Juan Fuster, Alberto Capellani and Émile Cohl. Although he remained with Pathé, in 1910 De Chomón returned to Barcelona and started an independent production company, Iberico Films, which proved short-lived.

In 1912, De Chómon accepted an invitation to make films in Italy. In addition to his own films, he worked on special effects on the films of others, notably Giovanni Pastrone's epic Cabiria (1914). Pastrone returned the favor in 1917 through collaborating on de Chomón's last directorial effort, La guerra e il sogno di Momi; de Chomón's own films had become less frequent after his move to Italy, and he had primarily worked in visual effects and cinematography in these years. After 1917, De Chomón principally worked on creating visual effects for the films of others, including Guido Brignone's Maciste in Hell (1925) and Abel Gance's Napoléon (1927). Towards the end of his life, de Chomón collaborated with Swiss inventor Ernest Zollinger to develop a photographic, two-color color film process. De Chomón was planning to get back into full-time film production on his own when he died, suddenly, of a heart attack at age 57.