Le Voyage dans la lune (1902)
Directed by Georges Méliès

Film Review

Le Voyage dans la lune is the film for which Georges Méliès is best known.  A major technical accomplishment for its day, deserving of its status as the first science-fiction film, this eccentric flight of fancy has given us one of cinema's most enduring icons - the moment when the lunar bound rocket pierces one eye of the unsuspecting Man in the Moon. (No one has since come up with a more apt visual metaphor for man's habit of desecrating nature.)  The film was a blockbuster for its time, even though it runs to just fifteen minutes in its most complete version and looks like a quaint piece of bricolage by today's standards.

By the time he made this film, Méliès was already a world leader in his craft.  His films (few running to longer than ten minutes) impressed not only with their imaginative design and dazzling effects, but also with their sophisticated storytelling.  These included stylised fantasies such as Cendrillon (1899) and Barbe-bleu (1901), historical tableaux like Jeanne d'Arc (1900) and reconstructions of recent news events (actualités reconstituée), the best being his L'Affaire Dreyfus (1899).  All played a part in the development of film narrative and paved the way for the director's most ambitious work so far, a literally out-of-this-world adventure.

The inspiration for Le Voyage dans la lune is often credited to Jules Verne's 1865 novel De la terre à la lune (a.k.a. From the Earth to the Moon), although the encounter between the explorers and the moon-dwelling creatures in the film's second half clearly owes something to H.G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon, which was first published in 1901.  (The moon dwellers are now usually referred to as Selenites, after the insect-like creatures in Wells's novel.)  Another important influence on the film was the féerie, a theatrical genre combing fantasy plots with striking visual effects that was hugely popular in the 19th century.  In common with many of Méliès's fantasy films, Le Voyage dans la lune is brazenly fashioned after the féerie style, with cartoonish sets and dazzling effects contributing the look of a theatrical spectacle.  French theatre's long tradition of burlesque is also represented by the abundance of sight gags that Méliès throws into the mix.  There is no place for realism or even logic in this kind of film - Méliès is out simply to entertain and offer his audience an enjoyable fantasy excursion.

Fun though the film is, Le Voyage dans la lune is more than just a lunatic farce dressed up with clever effects (this is apparent when it is compared with the inferior imitations that followed in its wake).  The film makes an effective anti-colonialist satire and takes an almost malicious delight in mocking the pomposity of the scientific establishment.  When we first meet the lunar explorers at their meeting place they are arrayed as pantomime magicians, with pointed hats and flowing gowns adorned with cosmic symbols.  They look more like a disorganised rabble than a gathering of learned men of science.  And when they arrive on the moon do they betray any trace of an enquiring mind?  No, as soon as they meet a race of unfamiliar beings they panic and start killing it.  (Admittedly the Selenites are damnably easy to kill - one prod with an umbrella and they're done for - but that's beside the point.)  The white colonialist instinct to dominate soon asserts itself, so rather than make peace with the cute little aliens (a job lot of acrobats from the Folies-Bergère), our enterprising men of science smack their leader to kingdom come before beating a hasty retreat back to Earth - and a hero's welcome.  It's worth noting that as well as being a busy filmmaker, Méliès was also a gifted caricaturist and he furnished various French magazines, including L'Illusioniste, with some fairly cruel caricatures.

Méliès had a hand in every part of the film's production but his real genius was in devising the special effects that make it so special.  Chief amongst these was the 'substitution trick', where he stopped the camera to allow time for an object to be inserted into or removed from a scene, before restarting the camera, thereby creating the illusion that something has magically appeared or disappeared.  The best example is the sudden evaporation of the Selenites when they are hit by their human antagonists.  Another ingenious piece of trickery is the apparent zoom in on the face of the Man in the Moon - this was in fact achieved by the actor being pulled in a chair towards the camera, an effect that has widely been used since.

Georges Méliès made Le Voyage dans la lune between May and August 1902 and began exploiting it commercially the same year.  His hopes of making a healthy return in the United States were frustrated by galloping piracy which later led him to set up a branch of his company in New York so that subsequent films could be registered under U.S. copyright.  Thomas Edison was one of the most flagrant pirates - he reputedly made a small fortune from the sale of unauthorised copies of the film.  The pirates may not have helped Méliès's bank balance but they helped to secure for him a place in posterity, since most of the surviving prints of his films are pirate copies distributed around the world without the author's awareness.

In common with quite a few of Méliès's films, Le Voyage dans la lune was exhibited in both black-and-white and colour versions.  The hand-coloured version was created at Elisabeth Thuillier's film colouring laboratory in Paris, with each frame being painted by hand by a large team of workers on a production line.  For many decades, no colour prints of the film were known to exist but then, in 1993, the Filmoteca de Catalunya, an important film archive in Spain, received such a print in a badly decomposed state.  A painstaking restoration was undertaken by Lobster Films between 1999 and 2005 which, by combining the salvaged fragments from the coloured print with better quality monochrome sources, resulted in the miraculous recovery of a cinematic gem.  Such was the success of Le Voyage dans la lune that not long afterwards Méliès attempted an even more ambitious journey into the stars with Le Voyage à travers l'impossible (1904).

Film Synopsis

At a meeting of the astronomy club, Professor Barbenfouillis announces his next venture: to lead a manned expedition to the moon.  Six astronomers volunteer to accompany him on his journey, which is made via a rocket shell catapulted to the moon by an enormous cannon.  As soon as the explorers emerge onto the lunar surface, there is an explosion and they are sent in all directions.   To recover, they lie down to sleep and dream a fantastic dream about the heavenly bodies.  When they awake, they are half-frozen and decide to go beneath the moon's surface to shelter.  Their next discovery is a grotto filled with giant mushrooms - behind which emerge the lunar inhabitants, the Selenites.   The explorers are taken to the king of the moon but manage to escape, by thrashing the fragile Selenites with their umbrellas.  They return to earth to receive a hero's return.