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Silent 101Film 1 of 20
A Trip to the Moon
Le Voyage dans la Lune
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Méliès, Montreuil, 1902, Star Film 399-411: a pièce à grand spectacle in 30 tableaux, about 260 metres. Professors in pointed hats build a shell, fire it from a cannon, and land in the Moon's eye; then selenites, a grotto, a parade home. Méliès plays Professor Barbenfouillis. Hand-colored prints, painted frame by frame in Élisabeth Thuillier's Paris workshop, sold for 1,000 francs against 560 for black-and-white. A color print found in Spain in the 1990s was restored in 2011.
In three programmes
The camera is a magic cabinet. Méliès fires a shell into the Moon's eye and lands a troupe of professors in a place that exists only because he painted it. Watch a selenite go up in smoke when struck with an umbrella. That substitution splice is the whole method.
The job: build a world. Thirty tableaux, a shell in the Moon's eye, selenites who go up in smoke when hit. Méliès had been a magician and treated the camera as the biggest cabinet he owned. See the hand-colored print if you can.
Méliès is here as the ancestor. Substitution splices, painted sets, a Moon with a face: a camera used to make things up rather than record them. The 1920s took the license and dropped the plot.
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