Méliès Sends Cinema to the Moon

In May 1902, French stage magician and filmmaker Georges Méliès began work in his Montreuil studio on an ambitious narrative project titled A Trip to the Moon. Méliès, who had operated Paris's Théâtre Robert-Houdin before turning to motion pictures, constructed the production inside a glass-roofed studio that allowed sunlight to illuminate his painted backdrops. The finished film was released in Paris on 1 September 1902 and a little over a month later in New York. Drawing inspiration from Jules Verne's novels From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, as well as an operatic parody by Jacques Offenbach and a 1901 fair attraction, Méliès synthesized stage illusions and trick photography into an extended fictional adventure.

The plot depicts a gathering of the Astronomy Club where its president, Professor Barbenfouillis, played by Méliès himself, organizes an expedition into space. After boarding a projectile-shaped capsule, six astronomers are launched from a colossal cannon. The capsule strikes the Man in the Moon in the eye before landing on the lunar surface. The travellers explore a landscape populated by giant mushrooms, encounter hostile alien residents known as Selenites who burst when struck, and are captured and taken before an extraterrestrial monarch. After destroying the ruler and fleeing back to their vessel, the astronomers fall off a lunar precipice, splash into an ocean on Earth, and return to an elaborate celebratory parade in their honor.