From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie A Trip to the Moon released in 1902.
Starring:
Georges Méliès, Victor André, Bleuette Bernon
Directed by:
Georges Méliès
Genre:
Short, Adventure, Comedy
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
TV-G
Budget:
30,000 FRF (estimated)
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
8.2
The Synopsis is:
A group of astronomers travel to the moon and battle with aliens.
This wonderful 13 minute movie was the creation of French filmmaker, Georges Méliès. He was an illusionist at a theater when he attended a special event demonstrating a cinematograph from the Lumière brothers' in 1895, which inspired him to take his act to the next level in moving pictures.
Méliès traveled to London to buy an animatograph sold by the Edison Manufacturing Company. By the next year he was showing his hand crafted films at his theatre on a daily basis. Between 1896 and 1913 he directed over 500 films all embracing a whimsical and theatrical display of magic tricks using visual illusions with editing and what is now called, in camera effects. He showed the world what could be done with film to create fantasy fiction on screen.
No film exemplifies that more than his most famous work, A Trip To The Moon shown in 1902.
The film was loosely based on the novel, From the Earth to the Moon: A Direct Route in 97 Hours, published in 1865 by Jules Verne. Originally, scientists of the day thought that space travel was theorized to happen through the propulsion of a gun shooting astronauts into space in a capsule, or bullet shaped casing. In the book, the Baltimore Gun Club, built an enormous space gun and launched three people to the moon.
A Trip To The Moon, goes a bit further giving us a look at the fantasy world of the moon and the adventures therein.
The story proceeds that instead of the gun club, Melies uses an Astronomy Club. The professor in charge is played by Georges, Professor Barbenfouillis, who proposes an expedition to the Moon with five astronomers Nostradamus, Alcofrisbas, Omega, Micromegas, and Parafaragaramus, who agree to take part in this experiment.
The beauty of this scene is that the set is a mixture of actual furniture, with a drawn backdrop to give the audience a clear indication that the space is an old institution, perhaps an old university. This is using some of the simplest principles of set design for a theatrical play. I love that simplistic creativity. You can use the same space to create any scene you want. Today, green screens are most commonly used to do this to drop anyone into a scene.
Besides these set pieces, Méliès built his own film studio in 1897 which had glass walls and a glass ceiling to let in as much sunlight as possible during the daytime hours. It’s a concept that was used by many still photography studios from that time due to the limitations on lighting technology. As a result, he had to schedule his day very strictly to make the most of the daylight, while he managed his theater shows at night.
The rocket ship in the film adopts the same bullet shape that is described in the book, ready to be shot out of a huge cannon into space. It looks flat, but there is a curvature in the structure to actually fit some to the astronauts inside. There may have been another exit point to have the astronauts leave as more are entering so it looks like the bullet ship can fit all of five of the men. All of these enormous props were created in a certain style and all of the props and background seem to follow suit, keeping it relevant in this world for the best enjoyment by the audience. It’s one of the reasons why live action and 2D animation don’t always work. There is a jarring difference. I bring that up to show you that Méliès had a natural eye for composing the two together.
The marines, who are the young women in sailors outfits, sees them off in celebration as the man in the Moon spys the approaching ship before it wedges itself in his right eye. It was a wonderful comedic effect, using makeup prosthetics, camera tracking creating a zooming effect and jump cut editing. The shot looks as if it is zooming in on the man on the moon, but actually a pulley-operated chair was placed on a rail-fitted ramp, placed the actor (covered up to the neck in black velvet) on the chair, and pulled him toward the camera.
Scenes on the moon were the earliest glimpses of a proposed other world on screen. We are led to understand that it has an atmosphere of air, gravity much like Earth’s, and cosmic bodies were entities that interact with the real world, making it snow on the satellite.
In this wonderful display of early special effects we see Méliès’ invention of double exposure, transitional dissolves and matting.
The professor uses his umbrella to compare the size of the mushrooms in a cave, when suddenly the umbrella turns into a mushroom. It’s clearly one distinct moment where Méliès sets up the shot keeping all of the actors still while replacing the umbrella with the mushroom, and then edited the two scenes together. It’s called the substitution splice technique. It’s a simple visual illusion but was an effect he discovered one day accidently while filming a city scene. He wasn’t the first to use this kind of effect. Edison did it before in a movie called The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots released in 1894. It was a relatively unutilized effect until Méliès’ use of the technique to depict magical and supernatural events. At the time it amazed audiences and it broke new ground that wouldn’t have been discovered for several years.
On the moon they encounter alien inhabitants, called selenites, named after one of the Greek moon goddesses, Selene.
I loved the look of the selenites which resemble insectoids or even lobsters. As a costume lover, even though we only get a brief view of the selenites, I remember being awe inspired seeing the gathering of selenites in their throne room, who were played by skilled acrobats. Méliès hired his actors mainly through his connections in the theatrical industry. One of the perks for being one of his actors is that at noon everyone received a free meal.
To get the look of the selenite costumes Méliès personally made them using cardboard and canvas from plaster molds he created. It’s just so fascinating to understand the level of production he put into this film at a time these strategies were not so far off from what we do today.
Ultimately the astronauts escape the selenites and the rocket ship falls off the tip of the moon and fall to earth, landing in the ocean. That effect was also very eye-catching, because the total was created through multiple exposure shots of the capsule falling in front of a black background. It was then superimposed upon the footage of the ocean. It was a wonderful trick. The underwater portion in the ocean was created by combining shots of a moving cardboard cutout of the capsule with an aquarium containing tadpoles.
To wrap up the story, the astronauts take on the role of superiority by being rather aggressive out of fear, initializing violence and eventually bringing back a selenite slave to Earth. The town celebrates the professor with a statue as the film ends. Perhaps this has something to say about colonization and hostilities against other cultures, but the idea is short and the film is over.
At 13 minutes, it was his longest film at the time and the most expensive costing about 10,000 to 30,000 francs and three months to make it.
To polish off the experience for the audience, many prints of A Trip to the Moon were individually hand-colored. In order to do this an assembly line of painters assigned with a specific color worked on each frame to get the desired results.
There was no specific music for the film, but in
In 1903, English composer Ezra Read published a piano piece called A Trip to the Moon: Comic Descriptive Fantasia used as a score for the film in some showings.
From September through December 1902, a hand-colored print of A Trip to the Moon was screened at Méliès's Théâtre and was being sold to different theaters through his studio Star Film Company. It was a hit in Europe, the United States and South America. One of those initial buyers sold the print, and other Méliès’ films, to the Edison Manufacturing Company. Edison duplicated and sold them to other firms. His films were being redistributed without his knowledge, sometimes uncredited and Méliès did not receive a dime for this blatant piracy.
By 1908 Méliès's magical films became a thing of the past and his films were also deemed too expensive to buy. At this point is when he also began having financial trouble competing in the film industry. At this time Edison monopolized it.
In 1917, his offices were taken over by the French military. His films were melted down for traces of silver to make boot heels. His theater was demolished in 1923 and in a moment of anger he burned all his remaining negatives of this work. By 1925, he was selling toys and candy from a stand.
A Trip To The Moon was lost, but rediscovered around the late 1920's, when nostalgic cinephiles remembered Méliès many contributions to film. A "Gala Méliès" was held for him in Paris on December 16, 1929 to celebrate his life’s work and he was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1931.
Though copies of the film were around, many of them were damaged or incomplete. In 1932, his film collection was bought by the Museum of Modern Art in 1936 and provided screenings of A Trip to the Moon. Unfortunately, most of his films are still lost forever in time.
An original hand-colored print of the film was discovered in 1993 and in 2002 another cut of the film was discovered in a barn in France also hand-colored. The film was restored in 2011 at Technicolor's laboratories in Los Angeles with a cost of $1 million and took a year to complete. It premiered on May 11th, 2011at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
A Trip to the Moon was named one of the 100 greatest films of the 20th century by The Village Voice and the film is listed in '"1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.
I remember seeing this film and it being my first silent film as a child and I just remembered loving it so much and wondering how it was all done. I love admiring the growth of filmmaking and this lets you enjoy that. The story was not elaborate but the story was not as important to Méliès than creating visual wonders for the audience to enjoy. This is a truly remarkable film with a wonderful display of imagination from a cinematic pioneer.
I’d like to end this with a small paraphrased quote from Méliès who said A Trip to the Moon was "surely not one of my best," but "it left an indelible trace because it was the first of its kind."
My Rating:
8.7
That sums up my review. This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
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