The orphan who lives in the Paris train station in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo is named Hugo.
Asa Butterfield plays Hugo Cabret, a boy who secretly maintains the station’s clocks after his father and uncle die. He lives behind the walls of the Gare Montparnasse and becomes connected to a mysterious mechanical automaton.
Hugo was released in 2011 and was adapted from Brian Selznick’s illustrated novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The story gradually reveals a connection between the automaton, early cinema, and filmmaker Georges Méliès.
The film stars Ben Kingsley as Méliès and Chloë Grace Moretz as Isabelle. Although Hugo is often described as a children’s adventure, its central tribute is to the history and imaginative possibilities of silent film.