La lune à un mètre

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.

'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!

Fantastic short film from pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès. A great companion piece to his later classic, A Trip to the Moon (1902). That name was also given to this one when released in the US. The original (and more fitting) name is The Astronomer's Dream. The story to this is an astronomer who looks like Merlin is visited by a woman and a demon and has dreams about the moon. The special effects and sets are really cool, especially when you consider this film's age. Méliès was ahead of his time in many ways. Definitely worth a look for anyone into film history or silent shorts or anyone with a few minutes to spare. I can't imagine anyone seeing this and regretting it. Well, a-holes maybe.

Maybe the first example of science fiction and fantasy in a narrative form from the pioneer of early cinema Georges Melies as he plays an astronomer studying in an observatory when a devil figure appears then a woman who sends the devil away.

The astronomer draws a globe on a blackboard which starts to move, when he looks through the telescope the moon appears with a large face like the face later used in Thomas the Tank Engine cartoons and it eats the astronomer's telescope.

Then small men come through the mouth of the moon and then it goes back in the sky and then the moon becomes a crescent when another figure in the shape of a lady appears.

This is just part of the content in a short film just over three minutes long that has set design, characters in costumes, special effects and use of editing as well as surreal imagery. The editing is jumpy but again it is Melies that was showing the early promise of cinematic illusion.