Passage III

1902: A Space Odyssey

Our technologically advanced times has allowed filmmakers to create spectacular science fiction films to intrigue us with worlds beyond our experience. Imagine the excitement in 1902 when audiences first saw Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), a groundbreaking movie produced by Georges Méliès.

[1] Undaunted, Méliès honed his-photographic skills to tell fantasy stories instead. [2] Méliès, a French magician, was fascinated by the workings of the new motion picture camera. [3] Specializing in stage illusions, he thought the camera offered potential to expand its spectacular magic productions. [4] By 1895, he was working with the new invention. [5] He found out, however, that the public preferred live magic acts to filmed versions. (35)

Méliès’s magician’s eye led him to discover the basics of special effects. (36) He experimented with effects such as speeding up and slowing down the action, reversing it for backward movement, and superimposing images of fantastic creatures over real people. Using overhead pulleys and trapdoors, he was able to do interesting things.

Aware of the popularity of Jules Verne’s science fiction novels, Méliès saw exciting possibilities in filming a space odyssey. The interplanetary travel film that he created, A Trip to the Moon, had production costs of $4,000, highly excessively for its time. In this film, a space capsule that is fired and thereby launched and projected from a cannon lands in the eye of the Man in the Moon. In a strange terrain filled with hostile creatures, the space travelers experience many adventures. They escape back to earth in the capsule by falling off the edge of the moon, landing in the ocean, they bob around until a passing ship finally rescues them.

Producing the film long before interplanetary explorations had began, Méliès could arouse his audience’s curiosity with unconstrained fantasy. People are still going to theaters to see science fiction films.