Film: Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon)
Director: Georges Méliès
Country: France
Released: September 1902
Runtime: 13 minutes
Genre: Fantasy
Studio: Star Film Company
Influenced: Pretty much everything
Although this early movie doesn’t count among the 365 selections from film history to be featured in the blog this year, there's no better place to start than with this most iconic example of early cinema. Along with American inventors like Thomas Edison, the French were among the early pioneers of cinema, with one of the earliest recorded films shot in Leeds in 1888 by a Frenchman called Louis Le Prince (entitled Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge).
Famous French directors from this early era of cinema include The Lumière brothers (notably with the film L'Arrivée d'un Train à la Ciotat, 1896), pioneering female filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché and Georges Méliès, a Parisian illusionist and actor who was in his early 40s when this film was released. Unlike the more serious-minded Lumière brothers, Méliès saw the cinema as an even larger canvas for his magic shows.
At 14mins long, the film is a fun, easy watch. Similar to many films I've seen from the time, there's the feeling to start with that you're just watching a recording of a theatrical performance – with all the unconvincing sets, bad costumes and overacting that can entail – but then specific filmic qualities appear, including the gradual close-up of the moon as the rocket approaches, as well as scene splicing and special effects, such as the aliens on the moon (Selenites) disappearing up in smoke.
There are comedic elements such as the rocket being fired towards the moon out of a large cannon, the way it then lands with a splat in the right eye of the moon's face, after which all the astronomers (devoid of breathing apparatus) leap out of the rocket happy and unscathed following a crash landing.
Méliès was inspired by leading science fiction writers of the time, such as Jules Verne and HG Wells, and the film really gives a sense of the industrious, forward-thinking spirit of the era. It's incredible to see a depiction on film of a moon landing almost 70 years before it actually happened. After all, that's what movies are good for – helping us give shape to our dreams (and nightmares).
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