About A Trip to the Moon (1902)
The story behind the film
Georges Méliès was a stage magician who ran his own theatre in Paris before discovering cinema in the 1890s. He quickly realised the camera could perform tricks no stage illusionist could manage — making people vanish, transform or multiply — and he built a glass-walled studio outside Paris to make hundreds of short "trick films". A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune), released in 1902, is his most famous.
Loosely inspired by Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and its sequel, it follows a group of astronomers led by Professor Barbenfouillis (played by Méliès himself). After a stormy meeting of their astronomy club, they build a giant cannon, fire themselves to the Moon in a bullet-shaped capsule, explore its surface, are captured by the moon-dwelling Selenites, escape, and fall back to Earth into the sea.
Cast & crew
- Written, directed and produced by Georges Méliès
- Georges Méliès as Professor Barbenfouillis
- Bleuette Bernon as Phoebe, the woman in the crescent moon
- Performers drawn from Paris theatre and music hall, plus acrobats from the Folies Bergère as the Selenites
- Produced at Méliès' Star Film studio in Montreuil
Why it's worth watching
The image of the capsule landing in the eye of the Man in the Moon is one of the most famous shots in the history of cinema, and it's only one of many delights. Méliès' painted sets, stage-style tableaux, chorus lines of young women loading the cannon, sleeping explorers watched over by stars with human faces, and Selenites who explode in puffs of smoke when struck with an umbrella — it's a magic show captured on film, full of invention and humour.
At about fifteen minutes it's an easy introduction to very early cinema, and it's fascinating to see how many ideas of later science fiction — the launch, the alien world, the hostile natives — are already here in 1902.
Fun facts
- The film was widely pirated, especially in the United States, where copies were sold without paying Méliès; the problem pushed him to open a US branch to protect his work.
- After Méliès left filmmaking in the 1910s, A Trip to the Moon faded into obscurity, but it was rediscovered around 1930 as film historians began to celebrate his work.
- A rare hand-coloured print was found in 1993 and painstakingly restored in 2011.
- Martin Scorsese's Hugo (2011) is built around Méliès' life and features recreations of scenes from this film.
Public-domain status
A Trip to the Moon was published in 1902 and is in the public domain in the United States. Modern restorations sometimes add new soundtracks with their own copyright; see "Rights & source" below for notes on the copy and music we broadcast.