In 1931, 12-year-old Hugo Cabret lives in Paris with his father, a widowed, but kind and devoted master clockmaker. Hugo's father takes him to see films and loves those of Georges Méliès best of all.
When Hugo's father dies in a museum fire, Hugo is taken away by his alcoholic uncle, who maintains the clocks in the railway station of Gare Montparnasse. The uncle teaches him how to tend to the clocks, then disappears. Hugo lives a secretive life in the station's hidden chambers and passageways, maintaining the clocks, avoiding the vindictive Station Inspector Gustave and his doberman Maximilion, and working on his father's most ambitious project: repairing a broken automaton – a mechanical man designed to write with a pen. Hugo begins stealing the parts he needs for the automaton, but a toy-store owner catches him and confiscates his carefully drawn blueprints.