Thanks to YouTube, I've been watching clips of the very first science fiction film ever created in 1902.
Le Voyage dans la Lune or A Trip to the Moon was a produced and directed by Georges Méliès, and loosely based on stories in Jules Verne and H.G. Wells novels ("Earth to the Moon" and "First Men in the Moon" respectively, though both were uncredited at the time). A segment near the end was completed with animation cells, also making this one of the first animated films.
The budget? 10,000 ₣rancs or about $1800, which wasn't chump-change at the turn of the 20th century! The silent film, originally narrated in French with a running time of 14 minutes, was extremely popular upon release, and has now been released to the public domain because its copyright expired after 100 years.
The leader of an astronomical society proposes a trip to the moon in the first scene, whereby most of the astronomers say the trip cannot be accomplished, but six agree to try. A very funny scene of multiple people building a "spacecraft" ensues, inexplicably showing men banging hammers onto what looks like a giant metal bullet! A pack of dancing girls push the bullet into a cannon, then "break the fourth wall" of the narrative by waving to the audience!
Makes me wonder if NASA ever considered hiring cheerleaders.
The moon is characterized as a large face, and the space craft crashes into his eye – but then the view switches to a flat terrain, whereby the astronomers fling open the hatch, disembark in their street clothes... and I guess "realism" in sci-fi mattered as much then as it does now – since they had no pesky problems with assuming the atmosphere was breathable nitrogen and oxygen... too funny!
The astronomers watch the Earth rise over the horizon, another understandable error of the time -- since to a person viewing Earth from the tidally-locked lunar surface, one side of the Moon always faces toward Earth and any such "rise" would only move slowly in a horizontal direction, taking many days to complete.
You can tell I'm a barrel of laughs in movie theatres.
After the astronomers set up camp to get some sleep, a comet passes over head, and then they are watched by human-faced stars in the shape of the Big Dipper. Saturn makes an interesting surprise appearance, but don't get me started on the snow flakes, the gigantic mushroom or the jumpy little Selenite acrobats exploding into smithereens. (???)
Eventually, they are taken to a moon palace of sorts, where they kill what must be the Moon King (we really can't be trusted to play well with others) and rush back to their big bullet. After toppling off a moon cliff and landing in Earth's ocean (I thought the jellyfish were nice touches), they are towed ashore where they are greeted by a parade.
Hmm... wonder what Neil & Buzz thought of this masterpiece? ;)
Posts
3 comments:
Yes - they also had parts of the movie in the tv series 'From the Earth to The Moon w Tom Hanks'
They had original scenes from the movie in the last 'episode'(DVD) ,showing how an enormous amount of money was spent making the movie in 1902 only to be robbed by Thomas Edison who bribed theater owners in Europe to get a film copy and showed it to people in USA (mordern day piracy).
The film made a lot of money in USA, but none of that money went to the original producer of the movie who subsequently went broke. :(
Oh I really should see that Hanks special sometime, LOL. I did see the bit about Edison when I was researching the history of the filmmakers... what a bummer! Seems he is the reason most international copyright laws exist :p
It's kind of reminiscent of, the first science fiction story upon the subject, entitled: "The Narrative of Arthur Gorden Pym of Nantucket." It was written by Edgar Allen Poe - prior to the turn of the century and isn't quite as dark as his other literary works.
Of course, Pym didn't use a bullet... but rather, chose to make his voyage there in a hot air balloon. I kinda like the whole bullet idea better, myself. lol
Post a Comment