A Trip to the Moon
A Trip to the Moon (French: Le voyage dans la lune)[a] is a 1902 French science-fiction adventure trick film written, directed and produced by Georges Méliès. Inspired by Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon and its 1870 sequel Around the Moon, the film follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon 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. Méliès leads an ensemble cast of French theatrical performers as the main character Professor Barbenfouillis.
For other uses, see A Trip to the Moon (disambiguation).
Although 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 ranked 84th among the 100 greatest films of the 20th century by The Village Voice.[6] The film remains Méliès' best known, and the moment when the capsule lands in the moon's eye remains one of the most iconic and frequently referenced images in the history of cinema.
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 in films was a later innovation.[11] Nonetheless, the following cast details can be reconstructed from available evidence:
Reception[edit]
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 [Méliès's] inconvenience."[84] The film was a pronounced success in France, running uninterrupted at the Olympia music hall in Paris for several months.[50]
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, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Detroit, New Orleans, and Kansas City reported on the film's great success in their theatres.[85] The film also did well in other countries, including Germany, Canada, and Italy, where it was featured as a headline attraction through 1904.[85]
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 The Kingdom of the Fairies and The Impossible Voyage among them).[86] 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."[87] The film which Méliès was proudest of was Humanity Through the Ages (1908), a serious historical drama now presumed lost.[88]