A Trip to the Moon (1902)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosted an extraordinary program entitled "A Trip to the Moon in Color, and Other Travels Through Time, Color, and Space" the other night.  The program, hosted by Serge Bromberg (film historian and archivist) and Tom Burton (head of preservation at Technicolor) featured more than ten short films ranging from the San Francisco city symphony/actuality A Trip Down Market Street (1906) to early experiments in hand-colorization (Gwalior, 1907), sound (one of the first sound print shorts was shown), 3-D (Méliès had a camera that shot two lenses and negatives side by side for quick duplication, which actually created rudimentary 3-D prints), and Deco animation (Joy of Living, 1934).  The evening culminated with the screening of a restoration of a handcolored print of Méliès's famous A Trip to the Moon (1902).  



Aside from cinephiles and film historians, the bulk of the public is probably familiar with the film via the homages paid to it (see the Smashing Pumpkins' video "Tonight, Tonight").  That's a shame because Méliès's film is significant for several reasons.  First, in 1902, the bulk of films were short actualities like A Trip Down Market Street.  This approach, pioneered by two of the figureheads of cinema, the Lumière Brothers, gave lower class audiences a chance to view (sometimes) exotic life in the raw.  They were, essentially, the first cinema documentarians.  Méliès was on the other side of that coin; a stage magician, he saw cinema as a showcase for his tricks and went from documenting his stage show in tableau settings to spinning what were, at the time, complex narratives.  When the average film lasted perhaps no more than five minutes, Georges Méliès came along with a a fourteen minute film containing more than fifteen shots, special effects sequences, and a story.  Essentially, he was the James Cameron of the 1900s and A Trip to the Moon was his Avatar (2009).  I know some of my film historian colleagues and friends may be rolling their eyes at my over-simplification, but the analogy serves these purposes.  

For the longest time, cinephiles and film historians knew A Trip to the Moon for being black and white.  Color existed during the 1900s but it involves paying someone (normally a team of women) to hand paint each frame of 35mm film.  This was an expensive and time consuming process and, due to the cost, those prints were normally played continuously to provide the most return on their costly investment.  That said, the colorization of A Trip to the Moon was not a Ted Turner-esque maneuver by Technicolor and Serge Bromberg.  Bromberg essentially stumbled upon a hand colored print from Spain whose nitrate had been petrified with decomposition (he described it as being like a hockey puck when he was given it).  In order to save what material was on the reel of film, Bromberg sped up the decomposition with a chemical solution and, as the film unspooled, he took digital JPEGs of each frame (the condition of the film meant that it could not be placed onto a digital scanner or projected).  After a decade, the JPEGs were given to Technicolor to assemble and restore.  A new soundtrack has been added by the French technopop group Air.  


What is there to say about the plot of A Trip to the Moon?  It tells a very small story about a group of scientists who want to learn more about the moon.  They build a rocket and a giant cannon and launch themselves towards it, iconically landing in its eye.  They explore the setting, discover moon men, get into some fisticuffs, and take the rocket home and celebrate.  The film lacks characterization because characterization wasn't the appeal:  it was, as film historian Tom Gunning has described, a cinema of attractions.  The appeal is not the story or the plot but the spectacle, a quality Méliès was a master at providing audiences with.  It's the set design and the special effects of A Trip to the Moon that still dazzles us today, especially given the lack of technology available at the time.  Painted canvas stands in for green screen, cardboard cutouts for CGI.  It's a stunning piece of filmmaking.  


The colored print was a joy to behold.  It furthers the fantastic nature of the settings, especially the mushroom caves and starry atmosphere of the moon.  Doubly impressive was the feat that Bromberg and Burton pulled off with such a neglected print; it's the perfect hybrid of old and new technology.  The main critique I have about the colored print was the score.  I love Air; Moon Safari (1998) and Talkie Walkie (2004) are two of my favorite electronic albums.  However, their score for the film, while a fine track on it's own, overwhelms the accomplishments of both Méliès and the restoration artists.  The backwards vocal tracks and the driving electronic percussion aesthetically upstage the film.  I wish they had gone more ambient and minimalist, along the lines of Cliff Martinez's score for Steven Soderbergh's Solaris (2002).  Still, I thank Bromberg and Technicolor for the wonderful program and their hard work and great care.  The colored A Trip to the Moon is a fantastic variation on a cinema classic.