George Méliès (1861-1938), a contemporary of Auguste and Louis
Lumière,
created the first international hit in motion picture history
in 1902.
For this film, he conceived an outlandish scenario,
that man would travel to the moon...
For this film, he conceived an outlandish scenario,
that man would travel to the moon...
With the mind of a practiced magician, Méliès was quick to pick up on
the visual tricks he could play with a camera. In only his first year of
experimenting with film in 1896, he used stop motion and substitution
to produce special effects in
which images vanished or duplicated from one frame to the next. This technique can be seen in his early work such as The Four
Troublesome Heads (1898):
His choreographed antics transferred theatrics to silent film, making Méliès the father of cinematic showmanship.
As the process of early
filmmaking required natural light, Méliès built a studio of glass in
Montreuil-sous-Bois, a suburb of Paris. He hand painted his sets,
dressed actors and actresses in fanciful costume, and filmed from 11
a.m. to 3 p.m., when there was enough daylight.
Inspired by two novels, Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and H.G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon (1901), A Trip to the Moon was by far the most imaginative film
production to date. Méliès followed a new trend and had
all 13,375 black and white frames hand painted in color. Bright colors added even more zest to
the already charming tale.
Although A Trip to the Moon achieved worldwide renown, the film was extensively pirated and plagiarized in America, and Méliès received insufficient recognition for his masterpiece. To prevent further piracy of his work, Méliès opened the Star Film Agency in New York City in 1903. A Trip to the Moon, however, would turn out to be his most acclaimed film, and his efforts were too late.
Méliès continued to produce films, but his style eventually became outdated. He reached an ultimate low in 1923 when he burned 500 of his own film negatives, and suddenly the majority of his work had vanished.
Over time, it's easier to forget about someone, no matter how innovative, when little remains to spark the memories. A color version of A Trip to the Moon was thought to be lost forever. Then, in 1993, a copy was found in Barcelona. The nitrate film sock was considerably decomposed, but filmmaker and restoration expert Serge Bromberg was dedicated to carefully unraveling it and photographing each individual frame.
Eight years went by before technology would permit further restoration of the colored images. In 2010, the restoration project was finally launched at Technicolor Los Angeles. Frames from a black and white version were used for reference and as replacements for any partially or completely damaged colored frames. With the help of digital color replication, Méliès' enchanting excursion was reincarnated in color and debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2011.
Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange chronicle Méliès' career and the pursuit to restore A Trip to the Moon in the documentary An Extraordinary Voyage. Granting new life to Méliès' work a century after its creation is indeed extraordinary, when the vibrant motion picture was thought to be lost forever. A new soundtrack by the French band Air accompanies the restored version.