''A Trip to the Moon'' (french: Le Voyage dans la Lune) is a 1902 French

adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme ...

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

directed by Georges Méliès. Inspired by a wide variety of sources, including Jules Verne's 1865 novel ''

From the Earth to the Moon ''From the Earth to the Moon: A Direct Route in 97 Hours, 20 Minutes'' (french: De la Terre à la Lune, trajet direct en 97 heures 20 minutes) is an 1865 novel by Jules Verne. It tells the story of the Baltimore Gun Club, a post-American Civil W ...

'' and its 1870 sequel ''

Around the Moon ''Around the Moon'' (french: Autour de la Lune, 1869), also translated as ''Circling the Moon'' and ''All Around the Moon'', is the sequel to Jules Verne's 1865 novel, ''From the Earth to the Moon''. It is a science fiction tale which continues th ...

'', the film follows a group of astronomers who travel to the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

in a cannon-propelled capsule, explore the Moon's surface, escape from an underground group of Selenites (lunar inhabitants), and return to Earth with a captive Selenite. Its ensemble cast of French theatrical performers is led by Méliès himself as the main character Professor Barbenfouillis. The film features the overtly theatrical style for which Méliès became famous. Scholars have commented upon the film's extensive use of pataphysical and

anti-imperialist Anti-imperialism in political science and international relations is a term used in a variety of contexts, usually by nationalist movements who want to secede from a larger polity (usually in the form of an empire, but also in a multi-ethnic so ...

satire, as well as on its wide influence on later filmmakers and its artistic significance within the French theatrical ''

féerie ''Féerie'', sometimes translated as "fairy play", was a French theatrical genre known for fantasy plots and spectacular visuals, including lavish scenery and mechanically worked stage effects. ''Féeries'' blended music, dancing, pantomime, and ...

'' tradition. Though the film disappeared into obscurity after Méliès's retirement from the film industry, it was rediscovered around 1930, when Méliès's importance to the history of cinema was beginning to be recognised by film devotees. An original hand-colored print was discovered in 1993 and restored in 2011. ''A Trip to the Moon'' was an internationally popular success on its release and was extensively

pirated Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...

by other studios, especially in the United States. Its unusual length, lavish production values, innovative special effects, and emphasis on storytelling were markedly influential on other filmmakers and ultimately on the development of narrative film as a whole. It was ranked 84th of the 100 greatest films of the 20th century by ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, th ...

''. The film remains Méliès' best known, and the moment in which the capsule lands in the Moon's eye remains one of the most iconic and frequently referenced images in the history of cinema. It is widely regarded as the earliest example of the science fiction film genre and, more generally, as one of the most influential films in cinema history.

Plot

At a meeting of the Astronomy Club, its president, Professor Barbenfouillis, proposes an expedition to the

. After addressing some dissent, five other brave astronomers—Nostradamus, Alcofrisbas, Omega, Micromegas, and Parafaragaramus—agree to the plan. A space capsule in the shape of a bullet is built, along with a huge cannon to shoot it into space. The astronomers embark and their capsule is fired from the cannon with the help of "marines", most of whom are played by young women in sailors' outfits. The

Man in the Moon In many cultures, several pareidolic images of a human face, head or body are recognized in the disc of the full moon; they are generally known as the Man in the Moon. The images are based on the appearance of the dark areas (known as lunar ma ...

watches the capsule as it approaches, and, in an iconic shot, it hits him in the eye. Landing safely on the Moon, the astronomers get out of the capsule (without the need of

space suits A space suit or spacesuit is a garment worn to keep a human alive in the harsh environment of outer space, vacuum and temperature extremes. Space suits are often worn inside spacecraft as a safety precaution in case of loss of cabin pressure, ...

or breathing apparatus) and watch the Earth rise in the distance. Exhausted by their journey, they unroll their blankets and sleep. As they sleep, a

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...

passes, the

Big Dipper The Big Dipper ( US, Canada) or the Plough ( UK, Ireland) is a large asterism consisting of seven bright stars of the constellation Ursa Major; six of them are of second magnitude and one, Megrez (δ), of third magnitude. Four define a "bowl" ...

appears with human faces peering out of each star, old Saturn leans out of a window in his ringed planet, and Phoebe, goddess of the Moon, appears seated in a crescent-moon swing. Phoebe causes a snowfall that awakens the astronomers, and they seek shelter in a cavern where they discover giant mushrooms. One astronomer opens his umbrella; it promptly takes root and turns into a giant mushroom itself. At this point, a Selenite (an

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...

oid

alien Alien primarily refers to: * Alien (law), a person in a country who is not a national of that country ** Enemy alien, the above in times of war * Extraterrestrial life, life which does not originate from Earth ** Specifically, intelligent extrater ...

inhabitant of the Moon, named after one of the Greek moon goddesses,

Selene In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Selene (; grc-gre, Σελήνη , meaning "Moon"''A Greek–English Lexicon's.v. σελήνη) is the goddess and the personification of the Moon. Also known as Mene, she is traditionally the daughter of ...

) appears, but it is killed easily by an astronomer, as the creatures explode if they are hit with force. More Selenites appear, and it becomes increasingly difficult for the astronomers to destroy them as they are surrounded. The Selenites capture the astronomers and take them to the palace of their king. An astronomer lifts the Selenite King off his throne and throws him to the ground, causing him to explode. The astronomers run back to their capsule while continuing to hit the pursuing Selenites, and five get inside. The sixth astronomer, Barbenfouillis himself, uses a rope to tip the capsule over a ledge on the Moon and into space. A Selenite tries to seize the capsule at the last minute. Astronomer, capsule, and Selenite fall through space and land in an ocean on Earth, where they are rescued by a ship and towed ashore. The final sequence (missing from some prints of the film) depicts a celebratory parade in honour of the travellers' return, including a display of the captive Selenite and the unveiling of a commemorative statue bearing the motto "

Labor omnia vincit ''Labor omnia vincit'' or ''Labor omnia vincit improbus'' is a Latin phrase meaning "Work conquers all". The phrase is adapted from Virgil's ''Georgics'', Book I, lines 145–6: ''...Labor omnia vicit / improbus'' ("Steady work overcame all th ...

Cast

When ''A Trip to the Moon'' was made, film actors performed anonymously and no credits were given; the practice of supplying opening and

closing credits Closing credits or end credits are a list of the cast and crew of a particular motion picture, television program, or video game. Where opening credits appear at the beginning of a work, closing credits appear close to, or at the very end of a ...

in films was a later innovation. Nonetheless, the following cast details can be reconstructed from available evidence: * Georges Méliès as Professor Barbenfouillis. Méliès, a pioneering French film-maker and magician now generally regarded as the first person to recognise the potential of

narrative film Narrative film, fictional film or fiction film is a motion picture that tells a fictional or fictionalized story, event or narrative. Commercial narrative films with running times of over an hour are often referred to as feature films, or feature ...

, had already achieved considerable success with his film versions of ''

Cinderella "Cinderella",; french: link=no, Cendrillon; german: link=no, Aschenputtel) or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a folk tale with thousands of variants throughout the world.Dundes, Alan. Cinderella, a Casebook. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsi ...

'' (1899) and ''

Joan of Arc Joan of Arc (french: link=yes, Jeanne d'Arc, translit= �an daʁk} ; 1412 – 30 May 1431) is a patron saint of France, honored as a defender of the French nation for her role in the siege of Orléans and her insistence on the coronat ...

'' (1900). His extensive involvement in all of his films as director, producer, writer, designer, technician, publicist, editor, and often actor makes him one of the first cinematic ''

auteur An auteur (; , 'author') is an artist with a distinctive approach, usually a film director whose filmmaking control is so unbounded but personal that the director is likened to the "author" of the film, which thus manifests the director's unique ...

s''. Speaking about his work late in life, Méliès commented: "The greatest difficulty in realising my own ideas forced me to sometimes play the leading role in my films ... I was a star without knowing I was one, since the term did not yet exist." All told, Méliès took an acting role in at least 300 of his 520 films. *

Bleuette Bernon Bleuette Bernon (6 June 1878 – 15 June 1937) was a French film actress who appeared in at least five films made by Georges Méliès around the turn of the 20th century. The earliest films, made before 1900, were usually without plot and had a ...

as Phoebe (the woman on the crescent moon). Méliès discovered Bernon in the 1890s, when she was performing as a singer at the cabaret L'Enfer. She also appeared in his 1899 adaption of ''Cinderella''. * François Lallement as the officer of the marines. Lallement was one of the salaried camera operators for the Star Film Company. * Henri Delannoy as the captain of the rocket. * Jules-Eugène Legris as the parade leader. Legris was a magician who performed at Méliès's theatre of stage illusions, the

Théâtre Robert-Houdin The Théâtre Robert-Houdin, initially advertised as the Théâtre des Soirées Fantastiques de Robert-Houdin, was a Paris theatre dedicated primarily to the performance of stage illusions. Founded by the famous magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdi ...

in Paris. * Victor André, Delpierre, Farjaux, Kelm, and Brunnet as the astronomers. André worked at the

Théâtre de Cluny The théâtre de Cluny or théâtre Cluny was an entertainment venue located at 71 boulevard Saint-Germain in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, inaugurated in 1864 and closed in 1989. Productions (selection) * 1869 : '' Le Juif Polonais'', oper ...

; the others were singers in French music halls.: "I remember that in "Trip to the Moon," the Moon (the woman in a crescent,) was Bleuette Bernon, music hall singer, the Stars were ballet girls, from theatre du Châtelet—and the men (principal ones) Victor André, of Cluny theatre, Delpierre, Farjaux—Kelm—Brunnet, music-hall singers, and myself—the Sélenites were acrobats from Folies Bergère." * Ballet of the

Théâtre du Châtelet The Théâtre du Châtelet () is a theatre and opera house, located in the place du Châtelet in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. One of two theatres (the other being the Théâtre de la Ville) built on the site of a ''châtelet'', a ...

as stars and as cannon attendants. * Acrobats of the

Folies Bergère The Folies Bergère () is a cabaret music hall, located in Paris, France. Located at 32 Rue Richer in the 9th Arrondissement, the Folies Bergère was built as an opera house by the architect Plumeret. It opened on 2 May 1869 as the Folies Trév ...

as Selenites.

Production

Inspiration

When asked in 1930 what inspired him for ''A Trip to the Moon'', Méliès credited Jules Verne's novels ''

'' (1865) and ''

'' (1870). Cinema historians, the mid-20th-century French writer

Georges Sadoul Georges Sadoul (4 February 1904 – 13 October 1967) was a French film critic, journalist and cinema writer. He is known for writing encyclopedias of film and filmmakers, many of which have been translated into English. Biography Sadoul was ...

first among them, have frequently suggested

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

The First Men in the Moon ''The First Men in the Moon'' is a scientific romance by the English author H. G. Wells, originally serialised in '' The Strand Magazine'' from December 1900 to August 1901 and published in hardcover in 1901, who called it one of his "fantast ...

'' (1901), a French translation of which was published a few months before Méliès made the film, as another likely influence. Sadoul argued that the first half of the film (up to the shooting of the projectile) is derived from Verne and that the second half, the travellers' adventures on and in the Moon, is derived from Wells. In addition to these literary sources, various film scholars have suggested that Méliès was heavily influenced by other works, especially

Jacques Offenbach Jacques Offenbach (, also , , ; 20 June 18195 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the Romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera ' ...

's opera-féerie ''

Le voyage dans la lune ''A Trip to the Moon'' (french: Le Voyage dans la Lune) is a 1902 French adventure film, adventure short film directed by Georges Méliès. Inspired by a wide variety of sources, including Jules Verne's 1865 novel ''From the Earth to the Moon' ...

'' (an unauthorised parody of Verne's novels) and the ''A Trip to the Moon'' attraction at the 1901

Pan-American Exposition The Pan-American Exposition was a World's Fair held in Buffalo, New York, United States, from May 1 through November 2, 1901. The fair occupied of land on the western edge of what is now Delaware Park, extending from Delaware Avenue to Elmwood A ...

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...

. The French film historian Thierry Lefebvre hypothesises that Méliès drew upon both of these works, but in different ways: he appears to have taken the structure of the film—"a trip to the Moon, a Moon landing, an encounter with extraterrestrials with a deformity, an underground trek, an interview with the Man in the Moon, and a brutal return to reality back on Earth"—directly from the 1901 attraction, but also incorporated many plot elements (including the presence of six astronomers with pseudo-scientific names, telescopes that transform into stools, a moonshot cannon mounted above ground, a scene in which the Moon appears to approach the viewer, a lunar snowstorm, an earthrise scene, and umbrella-wielding travellers), not to mention the

parodic A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its subj ...

tone of the film, from the Offenbach opera-féerie.

Filming

As the science writer Ron Miller notes, ''A Trip to the Moon'' was one of the most complex films that Méliès had made, and employed "every trick he had learned or invented". It was his longest film at the time; both the budget and filming duration were unusually lavish, costing 10,000 to make and taking three months to complete. The camera operators were Théophile Michault and Lucien Tainguy, who worked on a daily basis with Méliès as salaried employees for the Star Film Company. In addition to their work as cameramen, Méliès's operators also did odd jobs for the company such as developing film and helping to set up scenery, and another salaried operator, François Lallement, appeared onscreen as the marine officer. By contrast, Méliès hired his actors on a film-by-film basis, drawing from talented individuals in the Parisian theatrical world, with which he had many connections. They were paid one

Louis d'or The Louis d'or () is any number of French coins first introduced by Louis XIII in 1640. The name derives from the depiction of the portrait of King Louis on one side of the coin; the French royal coat of arms is on the reverse. The coin was rep ...

per day, a considerably higher salary than that offered by competitors, and had a full free meal at noon with Méliès. Méliès's film studio, which he had built in Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis in 1897, was a greenhouse-like building with glass walls and a glass ceiling to let in as much sunlight as possible, a concept used by most still photography studios from the 1860s onward; it was built with the same dimensions as Méliès's own Théâtre Robert-Houdin (13.5 × 6.6 m). Throughout his film career, Méliès worked on a strict schedule of planning films in the morning, filming scenes during the brightest hours of the day, tending to the film laboratory and the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in the late afternoon, and attending performances at Parisian theatres in the evening. Trip to the Moon Workshop

According to Méliès's recollections, much of the unusual cost of ''A Trip to the Moon'' was due to the mechanically operated scenery and the Selenite costumes in particular, which were made for the film using cardboard and canvas. Méliès himself sculpted prototypes for the heads, feet, and kneecap pieces in

terracotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

, and then created

plaster Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for moulding and casting decorative elements. In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of buildings, while "re ...

moulds for them. A mask-making specialist, probably from the major Parisian mask- and box-making firm of the Maison Hallé, used these moulds to produce cardboard versions for the actors to wear. Though other details about the film's making are scarce, the film historian

argued that Méliès most likely collaborated with the painter Claudel on the scenery, and with Jehanne d'Alcy on the costumes. One of the backdrops for the film, showing the inside of the glass-roofed workshop in which the space capsule is built, was painted to look like the actual glass-roofed studio in which the film was made. Many of the special effects in ''A Trip to the Moon'', as in numerous other Méliès films, were created using the substitution splice technique, in which the camera operator stopped filming long enough for something onscreen to be altered, added, or taken away. Méliès carefully spliced the resulting shots together to create apparently magical effects, such as the transformation of the astronomers' telescopes into stools or the disappearance of the exploding Selenites in puffs of smoke. Other effects were created using theatrical means, such as stage machinery and pyrotechnics. The film also features transitional dissolves. The pseudo-

tracking shot A tracking shot is any shot where the camera follows backward, forward or moves alongside the subject being recorded. In cinematography, the term refers to a shot in which the camera is mounted on a camera dolly that is then placed on rails � ...

in which the camera appears to approach the Man in the Moon was accomplished using an effect Méliès had invented the previous year for the film '' The Man with the Rubber Head''. Rather than attempting to move his weighty camera toward an actor, he set a pulley-operated chair upon a rail-fitted ramp, placed the actor (covered up to the neck in black velvet) on the chair, and pulled him toward the camera. In addition to its technical practicality, this technique also allowed Méliès to control the placement of the face within the frame to a much greater degree of specificity than moving his camera allowed. A substitution splice allowed a model capsule to suddenly appear in the eye of the actor playing the Moon, completing the shot. Another notable sequence in the film, the plunge of the capsule into real ocean waves filmed on location, was created through

multiple exposure In photography and cinematography, a multiple exposure is the superimposition of two or more exposures to create a single image, and double exposure has a corresponding meaning in respect of two images. The exposure values may or may not be id ...

, with a shot of the capsule falling in front of a black background superimposed upon the footage of the ocean. The shot is followed by an underwater glimpse of the capsule floating back to the surface, created by combining a moving cardboard cutout of the capsule with an aquarium containing tadpoles and air jets. The descent of the capsule from the Moon was covered in four shots, taking up about twenty seconds of film time.

Coloring

Color prints were produced for a small percent of Méliès's films and advertised alongside the black-and-white versions at a higher price. From approximately 1897 to 1912, these prints (for films such as ''

The Kingdom of the Fairies ''The Kingdom of the Fairies'' (french: Le Royaume des fées), initially released in the United States as ''Fairyland, or the Kingdom of the Fairies'' and in Great Britain as ''The Wonders of the Deep, or Kingdom of the Fairies'', is a 1903 Fren ...

'', ''

The Impossible Voyage ''The Impossible Voyage'' (french: Le Voyage à travers l'impossible), also known as ''An Impossible Voyage'' and ''Whirling the Worlds'', is a 1904 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès. Inspired by Jules Verne's play '' Journey Throu ...

'', ''

The Barber of Seville ''The Barber of Seville, or The Useless Precaution'' ( it, Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L'inutile precauzione ) is an ''opera buffa'' in two acts composed by Gioachino Rossini with an Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based ...

'' and ''A Trip to the Moon'') were hand-colored by Élisabeth and Berthe Thuillier's coloring lab in Paris. The Thuilliers led a studio of two hundred women, painting directly on film stock with brushes in carefully chosen colors. Each worker was assigned a specific color to apply to a frame of film in

assembly line An assembly line is a manufacturing process (often called a ''progressive assembly'') in which parts (usually interchangeable parts) are added as the semi-finished assembly moves from workstation to workstation where the parts are added in se ...

style, with more than twenty colors sometimes used for a single film. On average, the Thuilliers' lab produced about sixty hand-colored copies of a film.

Music

Though Méliès's films were silent, they were not intended to be seen silently; exhibitors often used a ''bonimenteur'', or narrator, to explain the story as it unfolded on the screen, accompanied by sound effects and live music. Méliès himself took considerable interest in musical accompaniment for his films, and prepared special

film score A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to e ...

s for several of them, including ''

'' and ''

''. However, Méliès never required a specific musical score to be used with any film, allowing exhibitors freedom to choose whatever accompaniment they felt most suitable. When the film was screened at the Olympia music hall in Paris in 1902, an original film score was reportedly written for it. In 1903, the English composer Ezra Read published a piano piece called ''A Trip to the Moon: Comic Descriptive Fantasia'', which follows Méliès's film scene by scene and may have been used as a score for the film; it may have been commissioned by Méliès himself, who had likely met Read on one of his trips to England. More recent composers who have recorded scores for ''A Trip to the Moon'' include

Nicolas Godin Nicolas Godin (born 25 December 1969) is a French musician best known for being half of the music duo Air. Early life Godin was born in Paris, Île-de-France, France, and studied architecture at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture ...

and Jean-Benoit Dunckel of

Air The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing f ...

(for the 2011 restoration; see the Hand-colored version section below), Frederick Hodges, Robert Israel, Eric Le Guen, Lawrence Lehérissey (a great-great-grandson of Méliès),

Jeff Mills Jeff Mills (born June 18, 1963, in Detroit, Michigan) is an American DJ, record producer, and composer. Thanks to his technical abilities as a DJ, Mills became known as ''The Wizard'' in the early to mid 1980s. In the late 1980s Mills founded ...

, Donald Sosin, and

Victor Young Albert Victor Young (August 8, 1899– November 10, 1956)"Victor Young, Composer, Dies of Heart Attack", ''Oakland Tribune'', November 12, 1956. was an American composer, arranger, violinist and conductor. Biography Young is commonly said to ...

(for an abridged print featured as a prologue to the 1956 film ''

Around the World in 80 Days ''Around the World in Eighty Days'' (french: link=no, Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) is an adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in French in 1872. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employe ...

'').

Style

The film's style, like that of most of Méliès's other films, is deliberately theatrical. The

stage set Set construction is the process undertaken by a construction manager to build full-scale scenery, as specified by a production designer or art director working in collaboration with the director of a production to create a set for a theatric ...

is highly stylised, recalling the traditions of the 19th-century stage, and is filmed by a stationary camera, placed to evoke the perspective of an audience member sitting in a theatre. This stylistic choice was one of Méliès's first and biggest innovations. Although he had initially followed the popular trend of the time by making mainly

actuality film The actuality film is a non-fiction film genre that, like the documentary film, uses footage of real events, places, and things. Unlike the documentaries, actuality films are not structured into a larger argument, picture of the phenomenon or coh ...

s (short "

slice of life Slice of life is a depiction of mundane experiences in art and entertainment. In theater, slice of life refers to naturalism, while in literary parlance it is a narrative technique in which a seemingly arbitrary sequence of events in a characte ...

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

s capturing actual scenes and events for the camera), in his first few years of filming Méliès gradually moved into the far less common genre of fictional narrative films, which he called his ''scènes composées'' or "artificially arranged scenes". The new genre was extensively influenced by Méliès's experience in theatre and magic, especially his familiarity with the popular French ''

'' stage tradition, known for their

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and d ...

plots and spectacular visuals, including lavish scenery and mechanically worked stage effects. In an advertisement he proudly described the difference between his innovative films and the actualities still being made by his contemporaries: "these fantastic and artistic films reproduce stage scenes and create a new genre entirely different from the ordinary cinematographic views of real people and real streets." Because ''A Trip to the Moon'' preceded the development of narrative film editing by filmmakers such as

Edwin S. Porter Edwin Stanton Porter (April 21, 1870 – April 30, 1941) was an American film pioneer, most famous as a producer, director, studio manager and cinematographer with the Edison Manufacturing Company and the Famous Players Film Company. Of over ...

and D. W. Griffith, it does not use the cinematic vocabulary to which American and European audiences later became accustomed, a vocabulary built on the purposeful use of techniques such as varied camera angles, intercutting, juxtapositions of shots, and other filmic ideas. Rather, each camera setup in Méliès's film is designed as a distinct dramatic scene uninterrupted by visible editing, an approach fitting the theatrical style in which the film was designed. Similarly, film scholars have noted that the most famous moment in ''A Trip to the Moon'' plays with temporal continuity by showing an event twice: first the capsule is shown suddenly appearing in the eye of an anthropomorphic moon; then, in a much closer shot, the landing occurs very differently, and much more realistically, with the capsule actually plummeting into believable lunar terrain. This kind of nonlinear storytelling—in which time and space are treated as repeatable and flexible rather than linear and causal—is highly unconventional by the standards of Griffith and his followers; before the development of continuity editing; however, other filmmakers performed similar experiments with time. (Porter, for instance, used temporal discontinuity and repetition extensively in his 1903 film ''

Life of an American Fireman ''Life of an American Fireman'' is a short, silent film Edwin S. Porter made for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It was shot late in 1902 and distributed early in 1903. One of the earliest American narrative films, it depicts the rescue of a wom ...

''.) Later in the twentieth century, with sports television's development of the

instant replay Instant replay or action replay is a video reproduction of something that recently occurred which was both shot and broadcast live. The video, having already been shown live, is replayed in order for viewers to see again and analyze what had j ...

, temporal repetition again became a familiar device to screen audiences. Because Méliès does not use a modern cinematic vocabulary, some film scholars have created other frameworks of thought with which to assess his films. For example, some recent academicians, while not necessarily denying Méliès's influence on film, have argued that his works are better understood as spectacular theatrical creations rooted in the 19th-century stage tradition of the ''féerie''. Similarly, Tom Gunning has argued that to fault Méliès for not inventing a more intimate and cinematic storytelling style is to misunderstand the purpose of his films; in Gunning's view, the first decade of film history may be considered a "cinema of attractions," in which filmmakers experimented with a presentational style based on spectacle and direct address rather than on intricate editing. Though the attraction style of filmmaking declined in popularity in favour of a more integrated "story film" approach, it remains an important component of certain types of cinema, including science fiction films, musicals, and

avant-garde film Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...

Themes

With its pioneering use of themes of scientific ambition and discovery, ''A Trip to the Moon'' is sometimes described as the first science fiction film. ''A Short History of Film'' argues that it codified "many of the basic generic situations that are still used in science fiction films today". However, several other genre designations are possible; Méliès himself advertised the film as a ''pièce à grand spectacle'', a term referring to a type of spectacular Parisian stage

extravaganza An extravaganza is a literary or musical work (often musical theatre) usually containing elements of burlesque, pantomime, music hall and parody in a spectacular production and characterized by freedom of style and structure. It sometimes also ...

popularised by Jules Verne and

Adolphe d'Ennery Adolphe Philippe d'Ennery or Dennery (17 June 181125 January 1899) was a French playwright and novelist. Life Born in Paris, his real surname was Philippe. He obtained his first success in collaboration with Charles Desnoyer in ''Émile, ou le ...

in the second half of the nineteenth century. Richard Abel describes the film as belonging to the ''

'' genre, as does Frank Kessler. It can also be described simply as a

trick film In the early history of cinema, trick films were short silent films designed to feature innovative special effects. History The trick film genre was developed by Georges Méliès in some of his first cinematic experiments, and his works remain th ...

, a catch-all term for the popular early film genre of innovative, special effects-filled shorts—a genre Méliès himself had codified and popularised in his earlier works. ''A Trip to the Moon'' is highly satirical in tone, poking fun at nineteenth-century science by exaggerating it in the format of an adventure story. The film makes no pretense whatsoever to be scientifically plausible; the real waves in the splashdown scene are the only concession to realism. The film scholar Alison McMahan calls ''A Trip to the Moon'' one of the earliest examples of pataphysical film, saying it "aims to show the illogicality of logical thinking" with its satirically portrayed inept scientists, anthropomorphic moon face, and impossible transgressions of laws of physics. The film historian Richard Abel believes Méliès aimed in the film to "invert the hierarchal values of modern French society and hold them up to ridicule in a riot of the carnivalesque". Similarly, the literary and film scholar Edward Wagenknecht described the film as a work "satirizing the pretensions of professors and scientific societies while simultaneously appealing to man's sense of wonder in the face of an unexplored universe." There is also a strong

vein in the film's satire. The film scholar Matthew Solomon notes that the last part of the film (the parade and commemoration sequence missing in some prints) is especially forceful in this regard. He argues that Méliès, who had previously worked as an anti-

Boulangist Georges Ernest Jean-Marie Boulanger (29 April 1837 – 30 September 1891), nicknamed Général Revanche ("General Revenge"), was a French general and politician. An enormously popular public figure during the second decade of the Third Repub ...

political cartoonist, mocks imperialistic domination in the film by presenting his colonial conquerors as bumbling pedants who mercilessly attack the alien lifeforms they meet and return with a mistreated captive amid fanfares of self-congratulation. The statue of Barbenfouillis shown in the film's final shot even resembles the pompous, bullying colonialists in Méliès's political cartoons. The film scholar Elizabeth Ezra agrees that "Méliès mocks the pretensions of colonialist accounts of the conquest of one culture by another," and adds that "his film also thematizes social differentiation on the home front, as the hierarchical patterns on the moon are shown to bear a curious resemblance to those on earth."

Release

Méliès, who had begun ''A Trip to the Moon'' in May 1902, finished the film in August of that year and began selling prints to French distributors in the same month. From September through December 1902, a hand-colored print of ''A Trip to the Moon'' was screened at Méliès's Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris. The film was shown after Saturday and Thursday matinee performances by Méliès's colleague and fellow magician, Jules-Eugène Legris, who appeared as the leader of the parade in the two final scenes. Méliès sold black-and-white and color prints of the film through his Star Film Company, where the film was assigned the catalogue number 399–411 and given the descriptive subtitle ''Pièce à grand spectacle en 30 tableaux''. In France, black-and-white prints sold for 560, and hand-colored prints for 1,000. Méliès also sold the film indirectly through

Charles Urban Charles Urban (April 15, 1867 – August 29, 1942) was an Anglo-American film producer and distributor, and one of the most significant figures in British cinema before the First World War. He was a pioneer of the documentary, educational, propa ...

Warwick Trading Company The Warwick Trading Company was a British film production and distribution company, which operated between 1898 and 1915. History The Warwick Trading Company had its origins in the London office of Maguire and Baucus, a firm run by two American ...

in London. Many circumstances surrounding the film—including its unusual budget, length, and production time, as well as its similarities to the 1901 New York attraction—indicate that Méliès was especially keen to release the film in the United States. Because of rampant film piracy, Méliès never received most of the profits of the popular film. One account reports that Méliès sold a print of the film to the Paris photographer Charles Gerschel for use in an Algiers theatre, under strict stipulation that the print only be shown in Algeria. Gerschel sold the print, and various other Méliès films, to the

Edison Manufacturing Company The Edison Manufacturing Company, originally registered as the United Edison Manufacturing Company and often known as simply the Edison Company, was organized by inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison and incorporated in New York City in May 188 ...

employee Alfred C. Abadie, who sent them directly to Edison's laboratories to be duplicated and sold by

Vitagraph Vitagraph Studios, also known as the Vitagraph Company of America, was a United States motion picture studio. It was founded by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, as the American Vitagraph Company. By 1907, ...

. Copies of the print spread to other firms, and by 1904

Siegmund Lubin Siegmund Lubin (born Zygmunt Lubszyński, April 20, 1851 – September 11, 1923) was an American motion picture pioneer who founded the Lubin Manufacturing Company (1902–1917) of Philadelphia. Biography Siegmund Lubin was born as Zygmunt Lu ...

, the Selig Polyscope Company, and Edison were all redistributing it. Edison's print of the film was even offered in a hand-colored version available at a higher price, just as Méliès had done. Méliès was often uncredited altogether; for the first six months of the film's distribution, the only American exhibitor to credit Méliès in advertisements for the film was

Thomas Lincoln Tally Thomas Lincoln Tally (1861 – November 24, 1945) on or near April 16, 1902, opened the Electric Theatre in Los Angeles, the first movie theatre in that city and the first movie theater in California known to have been built from the ground up i ...

, who chose the film as the inaugural presentation of his Electric Theater. In order to combat the problem of film piracy that became clear during the release of ''A Trip to the Moon'', Méliès opened an American branch of the Star Film Company, directed by his brother Gaston Méliès, in New York in 1903. The office was designed to sell Méliès's films directly and to protect them by registering them under United States copyright. The introduction to the English-language edition of the Star Film Company catalogue announced: "In opening a factory and office in New York we are prepared and determined energetically to pursue all counterfeiters and pirates. We will not speak twice, we will act!" In addition to the opening of the American branch, various trade arrangements were made with other film companies, including

American Mutoscope and Biograph The Biograph Company, also known as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1916. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, ...

, the

Trading Co.,

Robert W. Paul Robert William Paul (3 October 1869 – 28 March 1943) was an English pioneer of film and scientific instrument maker. He made narrative films as early as April 1895. Those films were shown first in Edison Kinetoscope knockoffs. In 1896 he s ...

's studio, and Gaumont. In these negotiations, a print sale price of 0.15 per foot was standardised across the American market, which proved useful to Méliès. However, later price standardisations by the Motion Picture Patents Company in 1908 hastened Méliès's financial ruin, as his films were impractically expensive under the new standards. In addition, in the years following 1908 his films suffered from the fashions of the time, as the fanciful magic films he made were no longer in vogue.

Reception

According to Méliès's memoirs, his initial attempts to sell ''A Trip to the Moon'' to French fairground exhibitors met with failure because of the film's unusually high price. Finally, Méliès offered to let one such exhibitor borrow a print of the film to screen for free. The applause from the very first showing was so enthusiastic that fairgoers kept the theatre packed until midnight. The exhibitor bought the film immediately, and when he was reminded of his initial reluctance he even offered to add 200 to compensate "for éliès'sinconvenience." The film was a pronounced success in France, running uninterrupted at the Olympia music hall in Paris for several months. ''A Trip to the Moon'' was met with especially large enthusiasm in the United States, where (to Méliès's chagrin) its piracy by Lubin, Selig, Edison and others gave it wide distribution. Exhibitors in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

, and Kansas City reported on the film's great success in their theatres. The film also did well in other countries, including Germany, Canada, and Italy, where it was featured as a headline attraction through 1904. ''A Trip to the Moon'' was one of the most popular films of the first few years of the twentieth century, rivalled only by a small handful of others (similarly spectacular Méliès films such as ''

'' and ''

'' among them). Late in life, Méliès remarked that ''A Trip to the Moon'' was "surely not one of my best," but acknowledged that it was widely considered his masterpiece and that "it left an indelible trace because it was the first of its kind." The film which Méliès was proudest of was '' Humanity Through the Ages'' (1908), a serious historical drama now presumed

lost Lost may refer to getting lost, or to: Geography *Lost, Aberdeenshire, a hamlet in Scotland * Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, or LOST, a hiking and cycling trail in Florida, US History *Abbreviation of lost work, any work which is known to have bee ...

Rediscovery

Black-and-white print

After Méliès's financial difficulties and decline, most copies of his prints were lost. In 1917, his offices were occupied by the French military, who melted down many of Méliès's films to gather the traces of silver from the film stock and make boot heels from the celluloid. When the Théâtre Robert-Houdin was demolished in 1923, the prints kept there were sold by weight to a vendor of second-hand film. Finally, in that same year, Méliès had a sudden fit of rage and burned all his remaining negatives in his garden in Montreuil. In 1925, he began selling toys and candy from a stand in the

Gare Montparnasse Gare Montparnasse (; Montparnasse station), officially Paris-Montparnasse, one of the six large Paris railway termini, is located in the 14th and 15th arrondissements. The station opened in 1840, was rebuilt in 1852 and relocated in 1969 to ...

in Paris. ''A Trip to the Moon'' was largely forgotten to history and went unseen for years. Thanks to the efforts of film history devotées, especially

René Clair René Clair (11 November 1898 – 15 March 1981), born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He wen ...

Jean George Auriol Jean George Auriol (January 8, 1907 – April 2, 1950) was a French film critic and screenwriter. He was the founder of the film magazine ''La Revue du cinéma''. Biography Jean George Auriol (born Jean-Georges Huyot; his name is sometimes writte ...

, and

Paul Gilson Paul Gilson (Brussels, 15 June 1865 – Brussels, 3 April 1942) was a Belgian musician and composer. Biography Paul Gilson was born in Brussels. In 1866, his family moved to Ruisbroek in the Belgian province of Brabant. There he studied the ...

, Méliès and his work were rediscovered in the late 1920s. A "Gala Méliès" was held at the Salle Pleyel in Paris on 16 December 1929 in celebration of the filmmaker, and he was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1931. During this renaissance of interest in Méliès, the cinema manager Jean Mauclaire and the early film experimenter Jean Acme LeRoy both set out independently to locate a surviving print of ''A Trip to the Moon''. Mauclaire obtained a copy from Paris in October 1929, and LeRoy found one from London in 1930, though both prints were incomplete; Mauclaire's lacked the first and last scenes, and LeRoy's was missing the entire final sequence featuring the parade and commemorative statue. These prints were occasionally screened at retrospectives (including the Gala Méliès), avant-garde cinema showings, and other special occasions, sometimes in presentations by Méliès himself. Following LeRoy's death in 1932, his film collection was bought by the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

in 1936. The museum's acquisition and subsequent screenings of ''A Trip to the Moon'', under the direction of MoMA's film curator Iris Barry, opened the film up once again to a wide audience of Americans and Canadians and established it definitively as a landmark in the history of cinema. LeRoy's incomplete print became the most commonly seen version of the film and the source print for most other copies, including the

Cinémathèque Française The Cinémathèque Française (), founded in 1936, is a French non-profit film organization that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world. Based in Paris's 12th arrondissement, the archive offers ...

's print. A complete version of the film, including the entire celebration sequence, was finally reconstructed in 1997 from various sources by the Cinémathèque Méliès, a foundation set up by the Méliès family.

Hand-colored print

No hand-colored prints of ''A Trip to the Moon'' were known to survive until 1993, when one was given to the

Filmoteca de Catalunya The Filmoteca de Catalunya is a film archive located in Catalunya, Spain, aiming at the preservation of film and the dissemination of audiovisual and film culture. The head office and public rooms (cinemas, exhibition rooms, library) are located ...

by an anonymous donor as part of a collection of two hundred silent films. It is unknown whether this version, a hand-colored print struck from a second-generation negative, was colored by Elisabeth Thuillier's lab, but the perforations used imply that the copy was made before 1906. The flag waved during the launching scene in this copy is colored to resemble the flag of Spain, indicating that the hand-colored copy was made for a Spanish exhibitor. In 1999, Anton Gimenez of the Filmoteca de Catalunya mentioned the existence of this print, which he believed to be in a state of total decomposition, to Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange of the French film company Lobster Films. Bromberg and Lange offered to trade a recently rediscovered film by

Segundo de Chomón Segundo Víctor Aurelio Chomón y Ruiz (also Chomont or Chaumont ; 17 October 1871 – 2 May 1929) was a pioneering Spanish film director, cinematographer and screenwriter. He produced many short films in France while working for Pathé Frè ...

for the hand-colored print, and Gimenez accepted. Bromberg and Lange consulted various specialist laboratories in an attempt to restore the film, but because the reel of film had apparently decomposed into a rigid mass, none believed restoration to be possible. Consequently, Bromberg and Lange themselves set to work separating the film frames, discovering that only the edges of the film stock had decomposed and congealed together, and thus that many of the frames themselves were still salvageable. Between 2002 and 2005, various digitisation efforts allowed 13,375 fragments of images from the print to be saved. In 2010, a complete restoration of the hand-colored print was launched by Lobster Films, the Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema, and the Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage. The digitised fragments of the hand-colored print were reassembled and restored, with missing frames recreated with the help of a black-and-white print in the possession of the Méliès family, and time-converted to run at an authentic silent-film speed, 16 frames per second. The restoration was completed in 2011 at

Technicolor Technicolor is a series of Color motion picture film, color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades. Definitive Technicolor movies using three black and white films ...

's laboratories in Los Angeles. Restoration costs were $1 million. The restored version premiered on 11 May 2011, eighteen years after its discovery and 109 years after its original release, at the

2011 Cannes Film Festival The 64th Cannes Film Festival was held from 11 to 22 May 2011. American actor Robert De Niro served as the president of the jury for the main competition and French filmmaker Michel Gondry headed the jury for the short film competition. South ...

, with a new soundtrack by the French band

. The restoration was released by Flicker Alley in a 2-disc

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...

and

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

edition also including ''The Extraordinary Voyage'', a feature-length documentary by Bromberg and Lange about the film's restoration, in 2012. In ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', A. O. Scott called the restoration "surely a cinematic highlight of the year, maybe the century."

Legacy

As ''A Short History of Film'' notes, ''A Trip to the Moon'' combined "spectacle, sensation, and technical wizardry to create a cosmic fantasy that was an international sensation." It was profoundly influential on later filmmakers, bringing creativity to the cinematic medium and offering fantasy for pure entertainment, a rare goal in film at the time. In addition, Méliès's innovative editing and special effects techniques were widely imitated and became important elements of the medium. The film also spurred on the development of cinematic science fiction and fantasy by demonstrating that scientific themes worked on the screen and that reality could be transformed by the camera. In a 1940 interview, Edwin S. Porter said that it was by seeing ''A Trip to the Moon'' and other Méliès films that he "came to the conclusion that a picture telling a story might draw the customers back to the theatres, and set to work in this direction." Similarly, D. W. Griffith said simply of Méliès: "I owe him everything." Since these American directors are widely credited with developing modern film narrative technique, the literary and film scholar Edward Wagenknecht once summed up Méliès's importance to film history by commenting that Méliès "profoundly influenced both Porter and Griffith and through them the whole course of American film-making." It remains Méliès's most famous film as well as a classic example of early cinema, with the image of the capsule stuck in the Man in the Moon's eye particularly well known. The film has been evoked in other creative works many times, ranging from

's 1908 unauthorised remake '' Excursion to the Moon'' through the extensive tribute to Méliès and the film in the

Brian Selznick Brian Selznick (born July 14, 1966) is an American illustrator and author best known as the writer of '' The Invention of Hugo Cabret'' (2007), '' Wonderstruck'' (2011), ''The Marvels'' (2015) and ''Kaleidoscope'' (2021). He won the 2008 Caldeco ...

2007 novel ''

The Invention of Hugo Cabret ''The Invention of Hugo Cabret'' is a historical fiction book written and illustrated by Brian Selznick and published by Scholastic. It takes place in France as a young boy finds his purpose. The hardcover edition was released on January 30, ...

'' and its 2011

Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of many major accolades, inclu ...

film adaptation ''

Hugo Hugo or HUGO may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Hugo'' (film), a 2011 film directed by Martin Scorsese * Hugo Award, a science fiction and fantasy award named after Hugo Gernsback * Hugo (franchise), a children's media franchise based on ...

''. Film scholar Andrew J. Rausch includes ''A Trip to the Moon'' among the "32 most pivotal moments in the history of

ilm Ilm or ILM may refer to: Acronyms * Identity Lifecycle Manager, a Microsoft Server Product * '' I Love Money,'' a TV show on VH1 * Independent Loading Mechanism, a mounting system for CPU sockets * Industrial Light & Magic, an American motion ...

" saying it "changed the way movies were produced." Chiara Ferrari's essay on the film in '' 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die'', which places ''A Trip to the Moon'' as the first entry, argues that the film "directly reflects the histrionic personality of its director", and that the film "deserves a legitimate place among the milestones in world cinema history."