Le VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE

(vt A Trip to the Moon)

    Film (1902)

    Star. Prod/dir Georges MELIES, who also played the inventor. 21 mins. Tinted.

   This is the 1st sf film (apart from short subjects lasting only 1-2 mins). French CINEMA pioneer Melies based this amusing spectacle extremely loosely on Jules VERNE's De la terre a la lune (1865; trans as the first half of From the Earth to the Moon 1873 UK) and H.G. WELLS's First Men in the Moon (1901), borrowing aspacecraft propelled by a gun from the former and hard-shelled Selenites from the latter. No attempt is made to depict the flight seriously; the Moon projectile is loaded by a line of grinning chorus girls; the Man inthe Moon is shown with the projectile stuck in his eye; the Moon travellers encounter a group of Selenites who explode when tapped with an umbrella; and the travellers safely return home, due to the pull of Earth's GRAVITY, in time to see a statue erected in their honour. Theinnovatory special effects are naturally primitive, but encompass many techniques still in use today.

   JB/PN