A TRIP TO THE MOON/LE VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE (1902)

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TO BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING: Live action combined with an early version of animation led to the first significant example of cinéma fantastique in A Trip to the Moon/Le voyage dans la lune (1902), Georges Méliès’s still-charming experiment. Courtesy: Star-Film.

CREDITS

Star Film; Georges Méliès, dir.; Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, novels; Méliès, scr.; Méliès, pro.; Michaut, Lucien Tainguy, cin.; Méliès, ed.; Méliès, prod. design; Claudel, art dir.; Jeanne d’Alcy, costumes; 14 min. (16 fps), 8 min. (25 fps); Color/B&W; 1.33:1.

CAST

Georges Méliès (Prof. Barbenfouillis/Man in the Moon); Victor André (Star Gazer); Bleuette Bernon (Lady in the Moon); Brunnet (First Astronomer); Jeanne d’Alcy (Pretty Girl); Henri Delannoy (Space Craft Captain); Depierre (Voyager).

MOST MEMORABLE LINE

Ow!

THE MAN IN THE MOON, AS THE ROCKET APPEARS TO CRASH INTO HIS FACE

BACKGROUND

Science fiction as we know it, particularly works that deal with space travel, was invented by two authors: France’s Jules Verne (1828–1905) and England’s H. G. Wells (1866–1946). Before their contributions, tales of journeys to the stars were fantasy of a romantic order, dating back to the earliest civilizations. During the nineteenth century, as science replaced alchemy and then inched toward respectability, Verne and Wells were among the first to invent a modern form of fiction that correlated to more enlightened views.

THE PLOT

Barbenfouillis, a university professor, addresses his colleagues in a classroom, sharing his theory that a rocket could transport earthlings to the moon. They shout him down, but their disbelief only encourages Barbenfouillis to prove his idea by building a huge gun and a bullet-like craft. In time, he and some friends launch into space. They crash on the moon and, while sleeping on its surface, are visited by strange beings from the sky. Skeletal creatures capture the humans and drag them before their cold-hearted queen. The earthlings fight their way free, hurry back to their craft, and return to Earth.

THE FILM

Georges Méliès (1861–1938) brought the visions of Verne and Wells to the new (and science-based) storytelling medium called “The Movies.” A Paris-based magician-turned-director, he is known to have read Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon (De la terre à la lune, 1865); recent research suggests he happened upon Wells’s The First Men in the Moon (1901) shortly before setting to work on A Trip to the Moon. This would explain why the first half of the film is drawn from Verne’s book while the second owes far more to Wells’s novel.

THEME

A Trip to the Moon offers an intriguing early example of the motion picture, a product for public consumption as well as an emergent art form, as a means of personal expression for its writer-director; or, as the French would come to call such rare talents, “auteur.” However much Méliès borrowed from previous narratives, he also used his own idea of magic: strange, haunting appearances and disappearances constantly occur in the film. If adapted from pre-existing sources, A Trip to the Moon is Georges Méliès’s film, one that set the pace for all cinema.

TRIVIA

If the legend is to be believed, Méliès happened on film by accident. Fascinated by the trick of making a woman disappear onstage, he accomplished this by tossing down a small amount of explosive powder, resulting in a momentary whiff of black smoke that allowed a woman to slip down a trapdoor. Méliès dreamed of taking this conventional effect a step further: a disappearance without any such “cover.” But how? In 1896, he wandered into a nickelodeon featuring films by the Lumière brothers. Called “actualités,” these fifty-second documentaries were shot in diverse sections of Paris. While Méliès was enjoying this “realistic” incarnation of film, something unintended appeared onscreen. A ripped piece of film had been edited back together, and, in the process, a half second or so had been lost. To Méliès’s amazement, a woman walking across the screen suddenly disappeared. He guessed what had happened and realized that celluloid could solve his problem. Among the first of his short movies, most of which are lost today, was The Vanishing Lady (Escamotage d’une dame au théâtre Robert Houdin, 1896).

If, by the turn of the century, the Lumières had pioneered one aspect of filmmaking, shooting on the streets for realism, Méliès took another direction, creating what may have been the first “studio.” Forsaking realism, he and his crew employed everything from papier-mâché to painted backdrops to create alternative universes. Not only are the surface and subterranean areas of the moon virtually “animated” in a futuristic fairy tale sense, but so too are those earlier sequences on Earth, including the lecture classroom scene and the blastoff from an impossibly long launcher, providing a precursor of what would come to be called “surrealism” in the graphic arts. In his primitive way, Méliès set the standard for experimental movies by Max Fleischer and Walt Disney in which actors enter a cartoon world.

The film was originally released in color, though, of course, color film stock would not exist for several decades. A team of artists achieved this effect by painting colors onto every single frame of film, a laborious task to say the least. The manner in which Méliès’s staff achieved this and other effects is depicted in Hugo (Martin Scorsese, 2011).