A Trip to the Moon

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A Trip to the Moon (or Le Voyage dans la Lune) is a strange, but fantastical film by Georges Méliès, and it was first seen by audiences in 1902. So that makes it a pretty damn old film. It was shot in black and white film, and then hand colored in. For a very long time it was thought that there wasn't a surviving, original copy of the film in color, but then one was found (oddly enough, since it is a French movie) in Spain. It was in pretty poor condition, and it was very fragmented, so it sort of sat untouched for a bit (it was found in the 90's and not restored until 2010). Some very ambitious folk decided to try their hand at restoring it, and we now can view this interesting, short little piece of art in color as well as in black and white.

Here is an example of the B&W vs Color:

Black and White

Hand-Colored

And here's another one for good measure (and because it's one of my favorite parts of the film):

Ahhh, my face! My beautiful face!

Ahhh, my face! My beautiful face! (Now in color!)

I took some notes while I watched the movie, and I think what really struck me is how fantastical this story is. It's about a group of old white guys who take a trip to the moon, crash land on the planet, and when one of the native folk pop up he/she/it is promptly whacked on the head by one of the old guys with a stick, and disappears in a POOF of smoke. When the old guys get to what I believe in the palace of the ruler of these folk, they start whacking all sorts of people, get chased back to their rocket-thing, and then fall off a cliff and therefore fall back to earth.

Basically they're huge jerks to the native people of the moon (who are a little strange, I'll admit, but c'mon, they didn't even try to talk to them). And they MURDER THE MOON KING. Rude. Wikipedia fleshes out the story a little more than I have, but that's basically it. I'm somehow reminded of the great conquerors of the Western world and how they weren't always nice to the native population. It's like the opposite of the Enterprise's mission (while it might not explicetly state "and do not explode the native people of foreign planets, I think the idea was discovery, not being a bunch of rude assholes).

I still find it captivating and beautiful, especially when the planets are personified (you'll see if you watch it yourself). If you do want to see it, click here for a link to the movie on youtube.

The image I've shared of the moon is one of the most iconic images in film history, as well as being "punny" (Wikipedia explains it pretty well).

If you want to read someone else's opinion, here's a link to a review/where I got the images from by Gary W. Tooze.