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George Melies's `A Trip to the Moon' welcomes a change in film making of the twentieth century. Combined with live action as well as models, the movie tells a story about astronauts who take a trip to the moon. The moon, having a human face captures the astronauts after they crash into its eye. They later escape the moon and it's moon-men and make it back to earth safely. Melies wrote, directed and starred in this movie. He used many important techniques in his films to make them successful. Not only did he develop editing skills and superimposed images, he also used double exposure to complete the magic behind his films. Still used today, Melies's special effects, small models, painted backgrounds, weird makeup and costumes were just some of the important things used in the movie `A Trip to the Moon.'

For the filmmaker Melies, the use of stop action photography played an important role in `A Trip to the Moon.' He specialized in making objects vanish or change by stopping and restarting his camera. The use of self-painted sets, real people along with animated figures and the placement of real faces on objects helped this 1902 movie draw in his audience and leave them with many astonished looks.

"Le voyage dans la lune" (1902, Georges Méliès) is loosely based on a story by Jules Verne. It also contains a little Greek mythology in that the inhabitants of the moon (Selenieten) are named after Selene, the Goddess of the moon.

The poster with the moon having a rocket ship in his eye is iconographic. The film itself is mainly of historical importance, but this historical importance is big.

Georges Méliès was one of the founding fathers of early cinema. He pioneered in special effects and made a start with film editing. His roots were in vaudeville theater. This can be seen in "Le voyage dans la lune" when the launching of the rocket ship is festively accompanied by a couple of cheerleader like girls.

Thanks to the initiatives of his countrymen the Pathé brothers film did outgrow the vaudeville format and got a theater of his own, called a cinema. Méliès fell into oblivion and got financial problems. Only due to a rediscovery in 1929 he could spend his last years carefree.

Watching this 1902 French extravaganza for the first time is like dipping your brain into the distant past. It's almost physically painful to try to imagine a world where this delightful little theatrical romp didn't previously exist and its circulation almost certainly created the art of narrative film as we know it. The trick photography, especially with the smoky smashing of the moon creatures, is as fresh as daisy and the intricate set design is stunning. Rarely are culturally significant artefacts this fun to actually consume.

Title says it all. Méliès was an interesting man, this is an inspiring movie.

In twenty years, Georges Méliès has designed and made approximately 600 short films, before prematurely disappearing because of a precarious financial situation aggravated by a widowhood in 1913 and the First World War in 1914. His originals were mainly destroyed between 1914 and 1925, either to recover the silver in themselves or to transform them into heels of military shoes for the "poilus", i.e. French World War I infantrymen. Thus, those available today, on YouTube for instance, are mostly hand-colored copies.

A century later, Georges Méliès is unanimously considered as a prolific and awesome pioneer. In France, he built the first film studio. He dedicated his life to silent film and illusions. This film is a masterpiece of illusions and poetry, thanks to many technical innovations, well before Avengers: Endgame (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2019). It is part of the French heritage, as Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost (Walter R. Booth, 1901) in UK, or The Great Train Robbery (Edwin S. Porter, 1903) in USA.