A Trip to the Moon [Blu-ray/DVD]

Director: Georges Méliès Georges Méliès

Overview

A Trip to the Moon is the most famous of the over 500 short films produced by cinema pioneer Georges M?li?s betwen 1896 and 1912, and its signature image of a bullet-shaped rocket lodging itself in the eye of a smirking moon is one of the most recognizable images in cinema history. An accomplished magician, M?li?s moved from simple recordings of his stage shows to dazzling fantasy epics which were among the first narrative films ever made. These "trick films" combined fantastic yarns, intricate painted sets, and elaborate costumes with such simple but effective special effects as slow motion, dissolves, and superimpositions. Like M?li?s's other long films of the period, Trip to the Moon is composed of a series of tableaux, each featuring chaotic action and multiple camera tricks photographed with a stubbornly static camera, which work together to tell a simple story. It proved sensationally popular with audiences, though Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery rode a slightly more sophisticated narrative to greater success the following year. As one of the earliest examples of cinematic fantasy, A Trip to the Moon paved the way for such filmic flights of fancy as The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars, as it proved that the seduction of the audience through special effects has roots deeper than the blockbusters of the Seventies.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/13/2018
UPC:	0617311684999
Original Release:	1902
Source:	Flicker Alley
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo, Digital Theater Systems, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	1:20:00
Sales rank:	19,079

Special Features

This publication also contains A Trip to the Moon a beautifully restored black and white edition from original 35mm elements with multiple audio tracks: an orchestral score by Robert Israel with optional English narration written by George Melies; piano accompaniment by Fredrick Hodges with optional Russell Merritt produced track of actors voicing the various characters as performed in the U.S. in 1903; Plus, two lunar-related shorts by Melies - The Eclipse (1904) and The Astronomer's Dream (1898)

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Victor André	Worker
Bleuette Bernon	Phoebe, the Moon
Brunnet	Worker
Jeanne d'Alcy	Actor
Henri Delannoy	Actor
Farjaut	Actor
Kelm	Worker
Depierre	Actor
François Lallement	Marieneoffizier
Georges Méliès	Professor Barbenfoullis
Delpierre	Worker
Farjaux	Worker

Technical Credits

Georges Méliès

Jules Verne

Georges Méliès	Producer,Director,Screenwriter
Jules Verne	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Le voyage dans la lune is Georges Méliès' most famous film, very loosely based on the novel by H.G. Wells. This 1902 release pretty much set the standard for science fiction genre films for more than a century. A passionate (perhaps mad) scientist proposes a trip to the moon; others scoff and ridicule him; the trip proves successful, but the scientist and his companions are attacked by moon creatures; the creatures take the scientists to their ruler, who sentences them to death; there is a struggle, and the scientists escape to their rocket; they return to Earth, and to the adulation of the public. What really holds this very short film together is Méliès' sense of spectacle. A former stage magician, Méliès became interested in cinema as a medium with which to astound his audiences, and this is precisely what he did. The most famous shot in the film, depicting a rocket hitting the "man in the moon" in the face, has become a cinema landmark, and has been anthologized in numerous compilations. The Smashing Pumpkins made a video in the '90s as a loving lampoon of the film's visual style, which deals almost entirely in stylized sets, exaggerated depth perspective, and the talents of the numerous vaudeville personalities Méliès used in his films. As a template for what was to come in the next hundred years, and simply as an entertainment, Le Voyage dans la lune is a cinema landmark, and still immensely entertaining and influential.