A Trip To The Moon (1902)

Film is unusual among other art forms, in that its origins can be firmly established. Consider music, for example: no one can say what the melody to be performed was; likewise no one will ever know what the first noteworthy play to be performed live was. However, because film has existed only in the relatively recent past, and also because at some point all projected motion pictures have left behind their original camera negative, we can fairly easily create a full appreciation of the history of cinema.

Georges Méliès' A Trip To The Moon (or La Voyage dans la lune in his native French) cannot, however, claim to be the first ever film, with that particular honour going to a 1888 feature, Roundhay Garden Scene. At just two seconds long, it's not a classic, and for the next decade film would follow this example, being viewed as something of a novelty. Early films created by entrepreneurs such as the Lumiere brothers and Mitchell & Kenyon simply document everyday goings on, and were no more than a minute long. They were popular because people would pay to see themselves on celluloid, but that was as far at the entertainment went.

And this is where Georges Méliès enters the picture. Méliès had previously worked as a magician before getting involved with film, and whilst his contemporaries were filming workers leaving factories or dancing on a lawn, Méliès was pushing the boundaries of what was achievable on celluloid. By the time he created A Trip To The Moon, he had been creating special effects based on his experience as a magician, for six years. Previously his films had been loose 2-3 minute works with very little story to hold them together, so when he released the epic, 14-minute A Trip To The Moon, the public had never seen anything on this scale.

With A Trip To The Moon we see a team of astronauts (one of which is played by Méliès himself) build a rocket and cannon, to fire them up to the moon. They crash into the eye of the moon (in one of the most iconic shots of early cinema) and once on the moon, aliens (referred to here as Selenites) appear. The astronauts discover they can make these aliens appear with a puff of smoke if they hit them with force, and proceed to destroy masses of these Selenites, including their leader. Outnumbered, the astronauts run back to their rocket and fall back down to Earth and into the sea. This was based on a Jules Verne story, From The Earth to the Moon (1865), and also appears to be the very first "science fiction" film. Watching it today, it's obvious how its influence has carried over the decades, evolving into Woman in the Moon (1929), Star Wars (1977), Blade Runner (1981) all the way up to Avatar (2009).

This was all thrilling stuff to an audience of 1902, who had never really seen anything like it before. Watching it back now, over a century later, it does look archaic, with none of the closeups or characterisation we'd eventually come to expect. Méliès obviously loved the cross-cutting technique and used it to death here, but ultimately it's apparent that he was just creating an entertaining 14 minutes of escapism for audiences to enjoy. We have to spare a thought for poor Méliès at this point, who had created A Trip To The Moon with commercial success in mind, and intended to release the film in America for profit. An unscrupulous Thomas Edison, however, got there first and released Méliès' film himself, depriving Méliès of any future profits. This contributed to Méliès' eventual bankruptcy in 1913, when he was forced to become a salesman to earn a living.

Unlike a lot of later landmarks in the history of cinema, A Trip To The Moon only lasts a few minutes and has a basic storyline, so can be easily watched on a coffee break or while waiting for the toast to burn. This really is a film that everyone should see, and really no one has an excuse not to. It's freely available on YouTube, and as the copyright has now expired you can happily watch it guilt-free. I bet poor old Georges Méliès is still spinning in his grave though. A Trip To The Moon is where cinema really got serious, and in 14 minutes you can witness for yourself the birth of an art form.