Georges Méliès, the birth of cinema, and the rocket that landed in an eye
Georges Méliès was a stage magician before he was a filmmaker. He bought a camera in 1896, a year after the Lumière brothers held their first public screening, and immediately understood that cinema was not a recording device. It was a magic trick with a longer running time.
A Trip to the Moon, released in 1902, is fourteen minutes long. It depicts a group of astronomers who build a bullet-shaped capsule, launch it from an enormous cannon, and land on the moon — specifically, in the moon's right eye. The moon has a face. The face is not pleased. The image of the capsule embedded in the moon's eye is one of the most reproduced frames in film history, and it was achieved with painted sets, theatrical costumes, and a camera that did not move.
Méliès made over five hundred films between 1896 and 1913. He went bankrupt in 1923 and spent his later years selling toys and sweets from a kiosk at the Montparnasse railway station in Paris. He was rediscovered in the late 1920s and given a small pension and an apartment by the French film industry. He died in 1938.
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Trip to the Moon Pin
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