A Trip to the Moon

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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

742:. 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 608:. 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 890: 527: 347: 1306: 1011: 1102: 625: 1325: 680: 876: 6354: 1375:. 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 scene, 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. 1407: 952:, 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. 746:, 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. 653:. 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 1093:

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."

416: 1185:, 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!" 399:) 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. 1500: 358:. 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 1525:

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

964:—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. Other filmmakers performed similar experiments with time. (Porter, for instance, used temporal discontinuity and repetition extensively in his 1903 film 2265:, p. 234: "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." 403:

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 "

1312: 1310: 1308: 1311: 1166:, 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 1331: 1329: 1326: 580:(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. 1330: 464:. 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. 1309: 66: 1410: 1414: 1413: 1409: 1408: 1415: 708:

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

676:). 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. 1344:

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

1504: 385:, 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. 1502: 1390:, 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 1412: 703:

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

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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

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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.

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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

828:, 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 1537:

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

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The stationary position of the camera, which became known as one of Méliès's characteristic trademarks, was one of the most important elements of the style. Though he often moved his camera when making actualities outdoors (for example, 15 of

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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 inconvenience." The film was a pronounced success in France, running uninterrupted at the

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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

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The film's total length is about 260 metres (roughly 845 feet) of film, which, at Méliès's preferred projection speed of 12 to 14 frames per second, is about 17 minutes. Films made in the same era by Méliès's contemporaries, the

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actually contains more than fifty shots. All such editing was deliberately designed to be unnoticeable by the viewer; the camera angle remained the same, and action continued fluidly through the splice by means of careful

785:'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 691:

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

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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

801:, 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 1850:, used in French theatre to mean "scene" or "stage picture," refers in Méliès's catalogues to distinct episodes in the film, rather than changes of scene; thus, Méliès counted thirty tableaux within the scenes of 1863:

The historian Richard Abel notes that stories involving trips to the moon, whether in print, on stage, or as themed attractions, were highly popular in America at the time; indeed, a previous film of Méliès's,

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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 yet; both the budget and filming duration were unusually lavish, costing

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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

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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."

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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.

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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

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in 1908 hastened his financial ruin, as his films were impractically expensive under the new standards. After 1908, his films waned from the fashions of time as fanciful magic fell out of vogue.

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Morrissey, Priska (2014), "La garde-robe de Georges Méliès: Origines et usages des costumes des vues cinématographiques", in Malthête, Jacques; Gaudreault, André; Le Forestier, Laurent (eds.),

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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."

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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

1367:, 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 649:

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

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argues that it codified "many of the basic generic situations that are still used in science fiction films today". Other genre designations are possible; Méliès advertised the film as a

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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."

338:. 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. 1800:

editing is necessary because, in reality, Méliès used much splicing and editing within his scenes, not only for stop-trick effects but also to break down his long scenes into smaller

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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

1142:, 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 458:(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 1235:

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

1208:. In these negotiations, a print sale price of US$ 0.15 per foot was standardised across the American market, which proved useful to Méliès. Later price standardisations by the 474:(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 442:

as Professor Barbenfouillis and The Moon. Méliès, a pioneering French film-maker and magician now generally regarded as one of the first people to recognise the potential of

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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

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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

1060:, 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. 1265:

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

817:. He did not require specific music for any film, allowing exhibitors freedom to choose whatever accompaniment they felt most suitable. When the film was screened at the 5169: 4236: 3642: 1641:, without the initial article. Similarly, though the film was first sold in France without an initial article in the title, it has subsequently been commonly known as 1833:

In Méliès's numbering system, films were listed and numbered according to their order of production, and each catalogue number denotes about 20 metres of film; thus

4399: 310:, 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 789:

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.

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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

6392: 3096: 1394:'s print. A complete version of the film, including the entire celebration sequence, was finally reconstructed in 1997 from various sources by the 6740: 6715: 3965:

Essai de reconstitution du catalogue français de la Star-Film; suivi d'une analyse catalographique des films de Georges Méliès recensés en France

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among the "32 most pivotal moments in the history of ," saying it "changed the way movies were produced." Chiara Ferrari's essay on the film in

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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

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theatre, under strict stipulation that the print only be shown in Algeria. Gerschel sold the print, and various other Méliès films, to the

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disappearance of the exploding Selenites in puffs of smoke. Other effects were created using theatrical means, such as stage machinery and

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In addition to these literary sources, various film scholars have suggested that Méliès was heavily influenced by other works, especially

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were shot with a moving camera setup), he considered a theatrical viewpoint more appropriate for the fiction films staged in his studio.

1635:, the common English-language title, was first used in Méliès's American catalogues. It was initially labelled in British catalogues as 6760: 6117: 5819: 4190:

Solomon, Matthew (Fall 2012), "Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896–1913)/Georges Méliès Encore: New Discoveries (1896–1911)",

4487: 1601: 1126:. In France, black-and-white prints sold for ₣560, and hand-colored prints for ₣1,000. Méliès also sold the film indirectly through 1455:

The restored version premiered on 11 May 2011, eighteen years after its discovery and 109 years after its original release, at the

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François Lallement as the officer of the marines. Lallement was one of the salaried camera operators for the Star Film Company.

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Barbenfouillis is French for "Tangled-Beard". The name probably parodies President Impey Barbicane, the hero of Jules Verne's

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modern French society and hold them up to ridicule in a riot of the carnivalesque". Similarly, the literary and film scholar

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Jules-Eugène Legris as the parade leader. Legris was a magician who performed at Méliès's theatre of stage illusions, the

6725: 6444: 6255: 6047: 5341: 3562: 1673:; Méliès had previously used the name in a different context in 1891, for the stage magic act "Le Décapité Recalcitrant". 31: 6370: 1014:

The statue of Barbenfouillis, seen here in a frame from the hand-colored print, may be intended to satirise colonialism.

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section below), Frederick Hodges, Robert Israel, Eric Le Guen, Lawrence Lehérissey (a great-great-grandson of Méliès),

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per day, a considerably higher salary than that offered by competitors, and had a full free meal at noon with Méliès.

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and create a new genre entirely different from the ordinary cinematographic views of real people and real streets."

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

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in films was a later innovation. The following cast details can be reconstructed from available evidence:

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Uncropped production still from the film, showing the edges of the backdrop and the floor of the studio

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Though Méliès's films were silent, they were not intended to be seen silently; exhibitors often used a

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was made, film actors performed anonymously and no credits were given; the practice of supplying

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Méliès, Georges (2011a) , "A Fantastical ... Trip to the Moon", in Solomon, Matthew (ed.),

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Proper names taken from the authorized English-language catalogue description of the film: see

1475:, a feature-length documentary by Bromberg and Lange about the film's restoration, in 2012. In 1431: 961: 448: 3694: 1122:, where the film was assigned the catalogue number 399–411 and given the descriptive subtitle 6033: 5942: 5752: 5745: 5710: 5696: 5527: 5299: 5183: 4958: 4902: 4870: 4835: 4821: 4431: 4298: 4219: 3801: 3218: 3146: 2747: 2681: 2619: 2590: 2324: 1544: 1273: 1256: 902:

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

763: 726: 495: 392: 3967:, Bois d'Arcy: Service des archives du film du Centre national de la cinématographie, 1981, 3172: 494:

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

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Méliès, carrefour des attractions; suivi de Correspondances de Georges Méliès (1904–1937)

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Landing safely on the Moon, the astronomers get out of the capsule (without the need of

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edition featuring both color and black & white versions of the film also including

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called the restoration "surely a cinematic highlight of the year, maybe the century."

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In order to combat the problem of film piracy that became clear during the release of

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watches the capsule as it approaches, and, in an iconic shot, it hits him in the eye.

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D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph

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spectacular theatrical creations rooted in the 19th-century stage tradition of the

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music hall in Paris in 1902, an original film score was reportedly written for it.

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Although he had initially followed the popular trend of the time by making mainly

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