La lune à un mètre

'The Astronomer's Dream (1898)' depicts a wacky nightmare than an astronomer has while gazing up at the moon. It involves devilish creatures, heavenly women and grotesque celestial bodies. It's explicitly framed as a dream (primarily via the title), so the piece doesn't have to make a lot of sense. That's good, because it doesn't. It operates on the sort of dream logic that sees ordinary activities morph into battles against otherworldly beings, sees regular objects take on a life of their own and pits a hopelessly logical protagonist against a hopelessly illogical situation. Making ample use of early special effects (mostly those achieved with a well-timed cut), the flick wonderfully achieves its goal of presenting a waking dream to its audience. It's short, sweet and visually impressive. It's still really good considering it came out 100 years before I was even born. 7/10.

This is another very early (19th century still!!) and simply MAGNIFICENT example of Georges Melies' magic: a queer 'science fiction' story (certainly one of the first EVER) about a scientist (played by Melies himself) who is hooked on his researches about the moon - which seems to take its revenge: first it comes alive on the drawing board, and when he looks at it through its telescope, it comes REALLY close to him, literally only 'a meter away', as the title says; and starts eating up everything in reach...

Here we have the great pleasure to enjoy more of the magician's cinematographic tricks he knew so perfectly well: people and things vanishing and reappearing, the drawn settings seemingly coming alive... THOSE are the 'little' shorts (with a running time of only about 3 minutes then) which led to today's movies with their special computer effects and almost unbelievable scenes - something that EVERY film fan should see in order to get to know the ORIGINS OF TODAY'S CINEMA!

An astronomer (dressed like a wizard) is visited in his observatory by various imps and fairies, and eventually a giant, eye-rolling anthropomorphic moon that eats his telescope, dissolves his umbrella, delivers a couple of frolicking moon-children, and eventually eats the old fellow himself. The entire phantasmagoric night turns out to be a dream (hence the original title ('The Astronomer's Dream'), which was more accurate than the deceptive American release "A Trip to the Moon"). The film is a wonderful showcase for Méliès' early experiments in 'trick photography' and includes a number of well done (for the era) substitution splices as the fanciful characters appear and disappear, and a clever animation scene in where images on the astronomer's black-board come to life. A clever and imaginative fantasy film from the early days of cinematography.

Astronomer's Dream, The (1898)

*** (out of 4)

aka La Lune a un metre

An astronomer is in his office working when the devil and a woman appear to him and this sets off a strange dream, which includes the moon attacking him. This is another enjoyable film from Meiles as we get to see various magic tricks including the familiar gags of the astronomer going to sit down only to have the chair disappear. What really stands out in this film is the attack by the moon, which is perfectly done and leads to several laughs. I love Melies' design of the moon making it something to fear with its evil eyes and mouth. The special effects are quite nice throughout. This is certainly a good place for newbies to start.

After I watched "La lune à un mètre", I read the summary for this short film on IMDB...and I must say that it explained a lot of what I just saw! Yes, the film is quite confusing and exactly WHAT is happening and WHY...well, they seem a bit illusive. Now none of this is to say this is a bad film. After all, it was made by the French master, Georges Méliès, and you know this means lots of trick photography and magical moments....and this one has plenty of them! So, instead of summarizing the film, I say just watch it and all the weirdness and just enjoy....it's clever, cute and much like so many of his other films, albeit the only one with a gigantic moon that eats telescopes!! Fun.