Scorsese's first excursion into what the Americans call 'family cinema' is the adventure of a lone child in a tradition as established as Oliver Twist.Photograph: Jaap Buitendijk/APBrian Selznick, author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret: 'What interests me about clocks is that everything is hand-made, and yet to the person looking at the clock, something magical is happening that cannot be explained unless you are the clockmaker.'Photograph: Brian SelznickBrian Selznick: 'The camera movements are based on my drawings, but bigger, grander and more operatic than anything I could have imagined.'Photograph: Paramount Pictures/AllstarMartin Scorsese's film Hugo: Jude Law as Hugo's father and Asa Butterfield as the boy.Photograph: Paramount Pictures/Allstar Picture LibraryHugo's father leaves behind a notebook. Brian Selznick says: 'I think that, however happy a family, every intelligent child thinks: "How did I come to be born to these parents?"'Photograph: Brian SelznickThe automaton: Scorsese's film is – for all its state-of-the-art 3D and its director's masterful eye – closer to, and more respectful of, the work on paper than any adaptation that comes to mind.Photograph: PRThe orphaned boy attempts to repair the mysterious automaton which is his father's legacy.Photograph: Brian SelznickBrian Selznick: 'I had to work from the question: why is a 12-year-old going through the trash after a fire at a museum looking for a broken machine?'Photograph: Paramount Pictures/Allstar Picture LibraryBrian Selznick: 'My drawings are 3in x 5in, and magnified.'Photograph: Brian SelznickBrian Selznick: 'I want to get the feeling right. If it's moving through tunnels, I ask myself, what is it like to move through tunnels?'Photograph: Brian SelznickAsa Butterfield as Hugo and Sacha Baron Cohen as the Montparnasse station inspector.Photograph: Jaap Buitendijk/PRHugo's quest brings him to another orphan, Isabelle.Photograph: Brian SelznickAsa Butterfield with Chloë Grace Moretz as Isabelle.Photograph: Jaap Buitendijk/PRThe drawings in The Invention of Hugo Cabret are achieved by painstaking cross-hatching.Photograph: Brian SelznickIsabelle lives in the care of an old man who keeps the station's toyshop.Photograph: Brian SelznickAsa Butterfield with Sir Ben Kingsley as toy seller Papa Georges, a former conjuror and magician.Photograph: Paramount Pictures/AllstarSad Papa Georges in his Montparnasse toyshop.Photograph: Brian SelznickSir Ben Kingsley as Papa Georges in his colourful shop. There is a secret to Georges's past that waits to be revealed.Photograph: PRBrian Selznick: 'People use computers more and more, which erase the hand of the artist – and I wanted to do something in which you see the hand of the artist.'Photograph: Brian SelznickThe drawing made by the automaton. Brian Selznick says: 'I began to think about the connections between clock-making, automata and magic – and the magic of film that was also hand-made.'Photograph: Brian Selznick
