Title: A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la lune)
Release Date: 4 October 1902
Cast: Victor Andre, Bleuette Bernon, Brunnet, Jeanne d'Alcy, Henri Delannoy, Depierre, Farjaut, Kelm, Georges Melies
My Rating: (10/10) ★★★★★★★★★★
Georges Melies is often considered the first truly gifted director of film, and his body of work boasts over 500 films in twelve short years. One could publish a noteworthy blog just by dissecting his surviving work alone, so I'll be quick: I think I'm in love with Georges Melies.
It isn't just that his films were revolutionary, which they were. It isn't that he was a visionary and is largely responsible for helping film find its legs and then ultimately learn how to walk. None of that is why I declare him my artistic soul mate of Fin de Siecle France. I say KIN because he was highly revered in his youth and then widely forgotten in his old age. A magician and performer in the theatre before film came about, he was clearly inspired by the vastness of what film could be and began to create films with a keen eye for both production and storytelling. He wrote, designed, directed, acted and shot the films himself, all the while having several other films ready or in the works. His output was steady and his aesthetic was fantastically ghoulish, though he managed to somehow fuse it with a sense of whimsy and delight. Just watching his films, you see the artisan he was and the methodical magician's mind behind the trick photographer. Watch a Melies film and you'll see a person clearly enchanted by a new form of expression and soaring limitless because of it.
This went on for years before Melies slowly started to go out of fashion. As film changed, it left this mustachioed magician behind. His giant, fantastic sets. His detailed and, when taken out of context, profoundly silly props. As film moved toward realism in the mid teens, Melies's career suffered. No one wanted their films gigantic with out of this world sillyness. They wanted them gigantic with real world scenery. The fiction and theatrics were left to the stage, a greater sense of realism was adopted, and Melies was edged out.
Before any of that though, he directed a fantastic piece called La Voyage dans la Lune. Depending on which speed you watch this film at, it clocks in anywhere between eight and fourteen minutes. In that short time you'll see Melies's cast of characters build a rocket ship, leave earth, land on the moon (in not one but TWO vastly different sequences played consecutively), battle moon creatures, fall from the heavens, land at the bottom of the ocean, and possibly get rescued at the end of it all (I won't spoil it). The scope of the design, when watched beside other films of the day, is massively impressive and the commitment to the fantasy on the part of everyone is laudable. A standout from the Melies catalog.
Other films by George Melies I have seen up through 1902
1896 - Une Nuit Terrible (dir Georges Melies)
1898 - La Lune a un Metre (dir Georges Melies)
1898 - Tentation de Saint-Antoine (dir Georges Melies)
1898 - Un Home de Tetes (dir Georges Melies)
1899 - Cendrillon (dir Georges Melies)
1899 - Illusioniste fin de siecle (dir Georges Melies)
1899 - Jeanne Darc (dir Georges Melies)
1900 - L'homme Orchestre (dir Georges Melies)
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