The Story
The film invokes the spirit of a Jules Verne adventure, to begin with, we see a musty group of elderly academics. They wear pointy hats and are arranged in a striking pyramid seating plan next to a lectern, blackboard in the background and astronomic paraphanalia arranged around the room. They are engaged in quiet conversation together and the whole event feels like an annual meetup of astronomers, taking the opportunity to exchange ideas and network. One particularly bushy bearded individual sits apart from the others, not part of the pyramid.
A group of six more men are introduced and led into the room, they line up at the base of the pyramid but they are clearly distinct from the others, I go the impression they were the academic big hitters, the most celebrated astronomers of this society. The whole room stops talking and pays them attention. Finally, these 6 men are given telescopes which they use to herald the entrance of the leader of the society, who bows in respect to his collegues before taking his place at the lectern.
The leader outlines his plans to the others, he plans to build a rocket (I'm sticking with the word rocket despite being aware that it is in fact not a rocket, mostly because I just don't quite know how to label the craft they build in a clear and consise way) and take it to the moon. The room erupts into vigourous debate, which dissolves into an argument. The leader climbs down from his lectern to engage his detractors vigourously after hurling books and paperwork at the bushy bearded man, the leader of the case against the plan. Eventually, the debate subsides and the argument is won, they will build a rocket and go to the moon. The chosen astronauts are the six and the leader.
We jump to the building of the rocket, the astronauts are inspecting it's progress, ensuring it is being built to thier plans. Finally, the rocket is ready and it is loaded into a cannon which towers above the Parisian skyline, it's payload of academics safely inside. The gigantic gun is fired with much pomp and ceremony and the expedition begins.
We see the moon getting closer as the rocket makes it's voyage before it finally lands on the surface - right into the eye of the man in the moon. The scientists disembark and celebrate their success. They enjoy watching the earth rise in the sky before settling down to sleep under the stars. The hardships of roughing it on the moon take the men by surprise however, and the rain drives them to seek better shelter, in a cave filled with gigantic mushrooms. One particularly bright scientist plants his umbrella in the cave and it grows into the biggest, straightest mushroom in the cave.
The endeavours of the explorers attract the attention of one of the native inhabitants - humanoid creatures of great dexterity and agility. It exhibits strange behaviour and the scientists are very uncomfortable with it and it's presence, trying at first to drive it away, then killing it when it does not go. Another comes and this one is slain too before a crowd of them arrive, too many for them to handle and they are taken into the creatures custardy and brought before their leader.
The leader of the aliens rules that they are to be beheaded, but the scientists slay him and escape, chased by, and fighting off the spear wielding alien army. They outrun the creatures back to their ship and topple it over the cliff they landed on, tumbling back down to earth, landing in the ocean, from where they are rescued by boat and brought back to Paris. In their escape, one of the creatures had grabbed the ship and was taken prisoner by the humans.
The scientists are celebrated and honoured for their achiements with a parade, and the captured alien is forced to dance to their success. The leader of the society has a statue made, depicting him pointing into the sky, standing with one foot on the moon, as a conquerer.
The Visuals
For the most part, the stage on which the actors played was captured by a locked down camera giving us the point of view of a stageshow audience. The sets were handmade and painted in a very theatrical, stylised presentation. One shot in particular breaks from this, and switches to a different, much more dynamic point of view, that of the rocket on it's approach to the moon.
The movie uses plenty of special effects, predominantly the stop trick but the return of the rocket to earth and hitting the water involves multiple different effects including double exposure and the use of newts on a model of the ship to play the alien and the scientist who made the descent on the outside of the craft.
The Sound
This is a silent movie, and the version I watched had an orchestrial score, a very upbeat tempo which lifted large sections from other popular classical pieces. It is my understanding that there is no official score.
What have I learnt
The Story
The story is clearly satire, we ridicule the scientists throughout. They are buffoons, who fight with each other, fall about and are not prepared for the very basics of their expedition. They are shown in contrast to the men building the rocket as clowns who can't keep their own feet, rolling on the floor while all around them, workers industriously and professionally turn their plans into reality. The satire goes on to mock the imperialist attitude that sees natives as a curiousity to be conquered and exploited.
Like the best satire, it doesn't go out of its way to explain that it is satire. There are clues, for sure, the cartoon like statue at the end, a mockery of the conquerers pose, the lack of any real danger to the scientists - elderly men - on the moon and the films refusal to let you admire them for their achievements. It let them reach the moon, and get back alive, yet they didn't bother to bring tents to account for the weather. It showed them debating their plans, but the argument is won with violence rather than intelligence and wisdom. Georges Méliès let us laugh at the expense of pomposity.
More interesting that the satirical edge to the film, I find the science fiction core fascinating. Like other great works of Sci-Fi, the ideas used in the film were used decades later when scientists did actually sent men to the moon, most notably, the return to earth landing in the sea. This shows a level of research and attention to detail to the story that absolutely benefited it.
The Visuals
I loved the visual style of this movie. There was a great influence of the stage on the artistic direction, cameras were for the most part static and from an audience point of view while we watched the action take place on exquisitely painted theatric sets. The one exception to this is the shot of the rocket approaching the moon. There we switch to a point of view from the front of the rocket itself. The moon grows bigger in frame, from a small part of the screen to a giant disk which dominates it.
I think my favourite scene in the film however is it's first, the astronomers meeting. The scientists are sat in a triangular formation, pointing directly at the window, and through the window we see the sky. To hammer the point home, a telescope points out the window, directly at the moon. Inside, one man - the man with the bushy beard sits apart from the group, he does not join in with the conversations and he folds his arms. He is an outsider, and has been sidelined by the establishment. When the six are led in, he is obscured and it made me forget he was ever even there.
When the six take their seats and the leader begins to talk, he is revealed once more, but he does not look at the leader, prefering to keep his arms crossed and look away. It feels personal, perhaps he was the previous leader of the society, pushed out by this (comparitively) younger upstart with shocking plans and ideas. When the plan is revealed he pushes through the six, bringing himself to the centre of the frame and to the center of everyones attention. His words are clearly important, the academics who seem to be in agreement with the leader as he outlines his plans start to argue. He has, with one motion of disagreement, split the rooms opinion. The leader resorts to throwing books at him until he retreats back to his chair, and although he continues his dissent to any and all who will listen, he has been put back into the background and his opinion retreats with him.
What I love about this scene is how effectively it sends it's message with visuals alone. There is no text to tell us about these men, who they are or what they plan to do. We know it is a film about going to the moon before we watch, but in a second we know these men are astronomers, academics and scientists. We understand the conflict despite there being no dialogue, and we watch the argument be won through the positioning of a characters prominance in the frame and the acting of the others around him.
I also felt that the two very different scenes, the two special effect scenes - the approach to the moon and the return to earth were deliberately very different to the stage aesthetic that was chosen for the rest of the film, and to me, they bookend the experience on the moon nicely. By doing this, we get a sense of excitement - they are both comparitively dynamic scenes, both for the sights we are about to see on the moon and for the explorers triumphant return home. They also re-enforce the idea that we are going to a different environment where things do not work quite as we expect them too. The aliens die in a puff of smoke, the sky is filled with anthromorphisised celestial bodies, not least the moon itself and umbrellas grow into mushrooms. When we return home, the second scene reinforces that we return to the world as we left it and back to what the scientists know as normallity.
The final thing I noticed visually was, despite the large number of people on screen in many scenes, there are few characters. In the opening scene, the academics sit with the bushy bearded man seperate. In front of the lectern sit three scribes. The three scribes exist solely to show the pomp of the occasion and the academics to show the course of the argument, as well as adding to the sense of occasion, yet they are not background actors, they are integral to our understanding of the scene.
Characters move fluidly between groups as well - the leader is a seperate character to the six, until he joins them, then he remains a part of them until the end of the film. The six, who in themselves only really represent one character blend in with the academics during the argument, then stand apart from them as it comes to it's conclusion. I feel this blending of characters and groups who represent a singular entity helps add to the feeling that they are complex and multi dimensional. The leader is passionate and inspirational and can be a ferocious dictator, yet he joins the six and is an equal amongst them throughout the expedition.