Georges Méliès Amongst The Stars
Mankind dreamed of going to the moon and flying through the stars long before the actual rocket ships were invented. And at the turn of the 20th century, these dreams had a distinct tinge of Victorian whimsy. Poetry, fantasy stories, and the popular stage traditions of musical extravaganzas and “fairy plays”–which often emphasized spectacle rather than storylines–would directly influence some of our earliest science fiction films. And what better examples could there be than the films of George Méliès?
Starting in the late 1890s, Méliès made several motion pictures involving either trips to outer space or fanciful depictions of the stars and planets. With their charming hand-painted sets, careful in-camera effects and hand-operated props, they contain some of the most iconic imagery of the earliest years of cinema.
The Astronomer’s Dream (1898)
After becoming enraptured by motion pictures while attending one of the Lumière brothers’ famed 1895 showings in Paris, Georges Méliès soon became a filmmaker himself. Starting in 1896, he began incorporating his own films into his Paris stage shows. These were very brief an heavy on simple special effects, such as stopping and restarting the camera to make characters disappear or transform at will.
Soon Méliès was experimenting with longer, more elaborate stories, starting with The Haunted Castle (1896) and the lost The Laboratory of Mephistopheles (1897). The Astronomer’s Dream (1898) was the third of these lengthier films, running about three minutes long today.
In the film, which is apparently set in a vaguely-medieval era, we see a bearded astronomer (played by Méliès himself) studying his books. He’s in his castle-like observatory complete with a gigantic telescope, all brought to life through the magic of trompe-l’œil painting. The devil appears in a puff of smoke, but then a moon goddess (which may be Diana) appears and banishes him. Struck by inspiration, the astronomer draws a globe and the moon on the board, but to his surprise the drawings start coming to life. When he attempts to study the moon through the telescope it appears in his observatory as a giant grinning face–and eats the telescope! Other oddities keep occurring, culminating with the reappearances of the devil, the moon goddess who defeats him once and for all, and the grinning oversized moon.
The Astronomer’s Dream was based on a sketch Méliès created for his stage magic show. Apparently the original print divided it into three parts: 1) L’observatoire; 2) La Lune; and 3) Phœbé. “Phoebe” was one of the Greek goddesses and her name was sometimes used as an epithet for moon goddesses like Diana. Méliès, along with other artists and filmmakers at the time, often incorporated mythological references into their work, and audiences would’ve been very familiar with them.
A Trip to the Moon (1902)
Méliès’s most famous film as well as one of the most famous films of all time, the roughly fifteen-minute A Trip to the Moon followed the adventures of several scientists as they embarked on a rocket expedition to the moon–a grinning, blinking, papier-mâché moon, to be precise. To audiences at the time, “the moon” didn’t merely have to be a rocky orb but a poetic concept, an unattainable dreamworld where any strange landscape or fantastical creature could be possible. Thus, Méliès’s scientists (named Professor Barbenfouillis, Nostradamus, Alcofrisbas, Omega, Micromegas, and Parafaragaramus, if you’d like to know) find a magical forest of giant mushrooms, encounter a race of alien beings (called the Selenites), and see the stars and planets visualized as beautiful women. Original prints were beautifully hand-tinted, bringing out the details of each set’s elaborate compositions.
Today, with its aliens and its stubby rocket ship, A Trip to the Moon is usually given the title of “first science fiction film.” While technically other space-themed films came first, Méliès did hit a kind of artistic jackpot with this short, creating images that stick with us while dozens of others from 1900s films can fade.
The Merry Frolics of Satan (1906)
This modern-at-the-time take on the Mephistopheles legend follows the comic story of engineer William Crackford and his assistant, who are planning a trip around the world. They’re invited to the laboratory of Alcofrisbas, who has the power to move and transform objects. Alcofrisbas cooks up some magical pills that grant wishes when you hurl them to the floor, and Crackford gets so excited that he signs a contract for the pills immediately. Naturally it turns out that he’s sold his soul to Mephistopheles (who is of course played by Méliès himself). The Merry Frolics of Satan is the English title, but the original French title literally translated as The 400 Tricks of the Devil.
Unabashed, Crackford and his assistant head out on their excursion in a magical train. They encounter Mephistopheles again and flee in a horse and buggy, but it gets transformed into an “infernal carriage” pulled by a strange, skeletal horse represented by a whimsical giant puppet. They’re chased to the summit of a volcano where an eruption blows their carriage into space, and they continue their bizarre journey among brilliantly-colored stars and planets. Even more dreamlike than A Trip to the Moon, Merry Frolics was apparently intended to be part of a stage play, Les Pilules du diable, which explains at least some of its fearless use of whimsey.
Eclipse: The Courtship of the Sun and Moon (1907)
In 1907 Méliès blended whimsey with a surprising bit of naughtiness to give his take on a scientific phenomenon. At least some scenes were apparently filmed for a Paris cabaret. We see a group of rather stuffy medieval astronomers, individual telescopes in hand, gather in a castle to watch a solar eclipse. The sun is shown as a grinning, devil-like face, while the moon is a “dainty Diana,” as film catalogues would describe. The sun and moon are shown sliding closer and closer, making suggestive winks and even licking their lips, until the sun slips behind the moon. More goofy, naughty expressions ensue.
Following the eclipse we’re treated to visions of the stars, visualized as mythological figures and beautiful women, a highlight being the well-known shot of a comet portrayed by actress Mademoiselle Bodson. The sight of all these wonders excite one of the astronomers so much that he topples out of the castle, landing in a fortunately-placed rain barrel.
These little, supposedly more “primitive” Méliès films were all a long way from today’s technical space expedition films or detailed fantasy worlds. Yet unlike more than a few of these modern special effects extravaganzas, their imaginative imagery has managed to endure.
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–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub
You can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.
Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.
