Le Voyage dans la Lune

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.

A Trip to the Moon is barely a film as a modern audience would understand it, but the short's intriguing visuals make it an entertaining and interesting watch. Effectively a reinterpretation of the classic nineteenth century colonial adventure story (oh no - savages!) in an outer space context.

B

A group of astronomers travel to the moon by getting shot out of a large cannon. They head into the interiors and encounter strange moon-men among giant mushrooms. The version I saw is black and white with a modern narration. The narration is off-putting and out-of-place. I would have loved to see the hand painted colors. Nevertheless, this is a classic. It is imaginative. It is beautiful. It has a nice narrative flow like watching a children's book come to life. The effects are fun. This is a cinematic icon.

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.

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.