A Trip to the Moon (French:Le Voyage dans la Lune) is a 1902 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès. Inspired by a wide variety of sources, including Jules Verne's novels From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, the film follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon in a cannon-propelled capsule, explore the Moon's surface, escape from an underground group of Selenites (lunar inhabitants), and return to Earth with a captive Selenite. It features an ensemble cast of French theatrical performers, led by Méliès himself in the main role of Professor Barbenfouillis, and is filmed in the overtly theatrical style for which Méliès became famous.
The film was an internationally popular success on its release, and was extensively pirated by other studios, especially in the United States. Its unusual length, lavish production values, innovative special effects, and emphasis on storytelling were markedly influential on other film-makers and ultimately on the development of narrative film as a whole. Scholars have commented upon the film's extensive use of pataphysical and anti-imperialist satire, as well as on its wide influence on later film-makers and its artistic significance within the French theatrical féerie tradition. Though the film disappeared into obscurity after Méliès's retirement from the film industry, it was rediscovered around 1930, when Méliès's importance to the history of cinema was beginning to be recognized by film devotees. An original hand-colored print was discovered in 1993 and restored in 2011.
A Trip to the Moon was a pioneering early dark ride, best known as the flagship and namesake of Coney Island's Luna Park.
History
The ride was originally designed by Frederic Thompson for the Pan-American Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo, New York. The popular ride cost US$0.50 ($14.00 in 2016 dollars) at the time. The fee was twice the price of other attractions at the exposition and was experienced by over 400,000 people before it closed on November 2, 1901. A Trip to the Moon was the first electrically powered mechanical "dark ride" and one of the first space rides.
After the exposition, Thompson and his partner Elmer Skip Dundy brought the attraction to Tilyou's Steeplechase Park, before later establishing it as the anchor of their newly opened Luna Park in 1903.
Experience
The first version of the ride involved a simulated trip for thirty passengers from the fairgrounds to the Moon aboard the airship-ornithopterLuna, with visions displayed of Niagara Falls, the North American continent and the Earth's disc. The passengers then left the craft to walk around a cavernous papier-mâchélunar surface peopled by costumed characters playing Selenites, and there visiting the palace of the Man in the Moon with its dancing "moon maidens", before finally leaving the attraction through a Mooncalf's mouth. After being brought to Coney Island's Luna Park, the ride was revamped in a new building at a cost of $52,000. The centerpiece of the ride was a ship called Luna III, enlarged to accommodate more passengers. The show had also changed from the original Buffalo incarnation. The ride rose over a panorama of Coney Island and passed over Manhattan's skyscrapers before rising into the clouds.
From the Earth to the Moon (French:De la terre à la lune) is an 1865 novel by Jules Verne. It tells the story of the Baltimore Gun Club, a post-American Civil War society of weapons enthusiasts, and their attempts to build an enormous sky-facing Columbiadspace gun and launch three people—the Gun Club's president, his Philadelphian armor-making rival, and a French poet—in a projectile with the goal of a moon landing.
The story is also notable in that Verne attempted to do some rough calculations as to the requirements for the cannon and, considering the comparative lack of any data on the subject at the time, some of his figures are surprisingly close to reality. However, his scenario turned out to be impractical for safe manned space travel since a much longer muzzle would have been required to reach escape velocity while limiting acceleration to survivable limits for the passengers.
The character of Michel Ardan, the French member of the party in the novel, was inspired by the real-life photographer Félix Nadar.
Sous les nuages de la nuit je marche vers la clairière. D'un éclat argenté je la vois, la lune. Elle porte les voiles de l'éternité, son auréole embrasse les étoiles, ma lune. Under the clouds of the night I walk towards the clearing I a silvery burst, I see it The moon It wears the veils of Eternity Its halo embrace
The work is made of hand-sewn images from newspapers and books to an old tea towel depicting some hapless members of the British royal family floating away on a hot air balloon fashioned from the moon in Georges Méliès’s film Le Voyage Dans La Lune ... .
Inevitably, Moon Safari dwarfed everything the duo has produced since, and Air haven’t made an album since 2012’s brief sojourn Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), the title of which ...
The first aliens depicted on film were in the 1902 French sci-fi short Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A TripTo The Moon), directed by George Melies. Professor Barbenfouillis (Melies) convinces his scientific colleagues to take a trip to the moon ... Q ... Q ... Q ... .
... very Rushdiean fashion) between an Italo Calvino story, a Tex Avery cartoon and the 1902 short Le Voyage Dans la Lune, which includes an image of a rocket violently embedded in the moon’s right eye.
READ MORE ... It also contained three of the group’s biggest hits to date, ‘Sexy Boy’, ‘All I Need’ and ‘La Femme d’Argent’ – all of which will be played live at the upcoming shows ... The duo’s last studio album, ‘Le Voyage Dans La Lune’, came out in 2012. .
AIR have announced new UK and European tour dates for their ‘Moon Safari’ anniversary tour, and a new deluxe reissue of the album. READ MORE ... FEBRUARY ... MARCH ... MAY ... The duo’s last studio album, ‘Le Voyage Dans La Lune’, came out in 2012. .
Air have announced a 2024 UK and European tour that will see the French duo perform their debut album ‘Moon Safari’ in its entirety for the first time. READ MORE ... Air’s last studio album, ‘Le Voyage Dans La Lune’, came out in 2012 ... .
