Le Voyage dans la Lune

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The title of Georges Méliès’Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902) is usually given the English translation of A Trip to the Moon, the word “trip” being an apt one when the lunar voyagers discover a landscape of giant mushrooms and crab-clawed inhabitants similar to the Selenites in HG Wells’ The First Men in the Moon (1901). I linked to a copy of this film years ago but these shots are from the recently reissued colour version, a print of which was discovered in 2002. The new version also includes a previously lost scene at the end. The soundtrack is by the French group Air. The more time elapses, the stranger these films seem. Queen Victoria had only been dead a year when this one was made; some of the young women here may have lived long enough to see the Apollo missions.

Previously on { feuilleton }
A Trip to Mars
Lunation: Art on the Moon
Somnium by Steve Moore
Blood on the Moon
Mushrooms on the Moon
Filippo Morghen’s Voyage to the Moon

4 thoughts on “Le Voyage dans la Lune”

  1. Sander: Yes, I know those illustrations but I’ve only belatedly realised that he was also the same artist responsible for some very strange erotic illustrations! I know the latter from one of the Taschen collections:

    http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Martin_van_Maële

    Andy: I still haven’t seen Hugo. I was hoping to buy it on Blu-ray but the only copies seem to be in 3D which my eyes (being permanently misaligned) won’t ever see. Looks like I’ll have to settle for a DVD.

  2. [Martin van Maële] was also the same artist responsible for some very strange erotic illustrations!
    There’s a Rops vibe going on there.

    Turns out that Georges Méliès was also a talented painter.

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