O Sonho do Astrônomo

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.

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.

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.

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!

George Méliès makes my mind melt and my jaw drop again! This short film is actually better than the last! It has the extremely cool illusions of people appearing and disappearing out of thin air (still do not know how that was accomplished), but this one steps it up a notch. There's this really creepy moon that eats the furniture that moves on its own and it looks awesome. The guy who is playing the astronomer did a great job. His performance made me laugh. The biggest improvement though is the addition of music. Just simply adding music helps, but it's even better when the music fits perfectly and adds another level of enjoyment to something, which is the case here. This makes me way more eager to check out more of George Méliès work, and I think I can safely say I won't be disappointed.