Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination

Description

"Best moving pictures I ever saw." Thus did one Vaudeville theater manager describe Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon [Le Voyage dans la lune], after it was screened for enthusiastic audiences in October 1902. Cinema's first true blockbuster, A Trip to the Moon still inspires such superlatives and continues to be widely viewed on DVD, on the Internet, and in countless film courses. In Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination, leading film scholars examine Méliès's landmark film in detail, demonstrating its many crucial connecions to literature, popular culture, and visual culture of the time, as well as its long "afterlife" in more recent films, television, and music videos. Together, these essays make clear that Méliès was not only a major filmmaker but also a key figure in the emergence of modern spectacle and the birth of the modern cinematic imagination, and by bringing interdisciplinary methodologies of early cinema studies to bear on A Trip to the Moon, the contributors also open up much larger questions about aesthetics, media, and modernity.

In his introduction, Matthew Solomon traces the convoluted provenance of the film's multiple versions and its key place in the historiography of cinema, and an appendix contains a useful dossier of primary-source documents that contextualize the film's production, along with translations of two major articles written by Méliès himself.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. A Trip to the Movies: Georges Méliès, Filmmaker and Magician (1861–1938)

2. Theatricality, Narrativity, and Trickality: Reevaluating the Cinema of Georges Méliès

3. A Trip to the Moon: A Composite Film

4. First-Footing on the Moon: Méliès’s Debt to Verne and Wells and His Influence in Great Britain

5. “Distance Does Not Exist”: Méliès, le Cinéma, and the Moon

6. Shooting into Outer Space: Reframing Modern Vision

7. A Trip to the Moon as Féerie

8. A Trip to the Moon as an American Phenomenon

9. A Trip to the Fair; or, Moon-Walking in Space

10. The Stars Might Be Smiling: A Feminist Forage into a Famous Film

11. Impossible Voyages and Extraordinary Adventures in Early Science Fiction Cinema: From Robida to Méliès and Marcel Fabre

12. No One-Way Ticket to the Moon

Appendix
A Fantastical . . . Trip to the Moon
Georges Méliès, “Answer to Questionary [sic]”
Georges Méliès, “The Marvelous in the Cinema”
Georges Méliès, “The Importance of the Script"
List of Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Película fotográfica
• Visual culture
• Filmmaking
• History of film
• Cinema
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438435824
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Also in the series
William Rothman, editor, Cavell on Film
J. David Slocum, editor, Rebel Without a Cause
Joe McElhaney, The Death of Classical Cinema
Kirsten Moana Thompson, Apocalyptic Dread
Frances Gateward, editor, Seoul Searching
Michael Atkinson, editor, Exile Cinema
Bert Cardullo, Soundings on Cinema
Paul S. Moore, Now Playing
Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann, Ecology and Popular Film
William Rothman, editor, Three Documentary Filmmakers
Sean Griffin, editor, Hetero
Jean-Michel Frodon, editor, Cinema and the Shoah
Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Constantine Verevis, editors, Second Takes

Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination
Georges Méliès's Trip to the Moon

Edited by
Matthew Solomon

Cover: G. Méliès, “L'arrivée de l'obus dans la Lune,” Le Nouvel Art cinématographique , 2d series, no. 5 (January 1930): 82. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2011 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Eileen Meehan Marketing by Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fantastic voyages of the cinematic imagination : Georges Méliès's Trip to the moon / edited by Matthew Solomon.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3581-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-3580-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Trip to the moon (Motion picture) 2. Méliès, Georges, 1861–1938—
Criticism and interpretation. I. Solomon, Matthew.
PN1997.T693F36 2011
791.43'72—dc22                                                                                           2010025994
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Charlie

“A Trip to the Movies: Georges Méliès, Filmmaker and Magician (1861–1938)” by Paolo Cherchi Usai was first published in Image 34, nos. 3–4 (1991): 2–11. Reprinted with permission of the George Eastman House.
“Theatricality, Narrativity, and Trickality: Reevaluating the Cinema of Georges Méliès” by André Gaudreault was first published in English in the Journal of Film and Television 15, no. 3 (1987): 110–119. Revised version published with permission of Heldref Publications and Taylor & Francis.
“ A Trip to the Moon : A Composite Film” by Thierry Lefebvre was originally published in French as “ Le Voyage dans la lune , film composite,” in Méliès, magie et cinéma , ed. Jacques Malthête and Laurent Mannoni (Paris-Musées, 2002), 171–192. It is published in English translation here with permission of the author.

Illustrations Figure 0-1 . One of a number of substitution splices in A Trip to the Moon Figure 0-2 . A Trip to the Moon —the captured Selenite displayed for the crowd Figure 0-3 . Detail of caricature by Méliès [pseud., Geo. Smile], La Griffe , January 23, 1890 Figure 0-4 . A Trip to the Moon (detail)—the statue of Barbenfouillis Figure 0-5 . Excursion dans la lune (1908) Figure 2-1 . A Trip to the Moon —On the moon Figure 2-2 . A Trip to the Moon —In space Figure 2-3 . A Trip to the Moon —Above the ocean Figure 2-4 . A Trip to the Moon —At the bottom of the sea Figure 2-5 . Fairyland —Diagram of the various camera positions, tableaux 23–29 Figure 3-1 . Half of a stereoscope card, Le Voyage dans la lune —“Le Canon” (Collection Cinémathèque française) Figure 3-2 . Stereoscope card, Le Voyage dans la lune —“Le Roi Cosmos” (Collection Cinémathèque française) Figure 5-1 . A Trip to the Moon —drawings of earth and moon; moon in distance Figure 8-1 . A Trip to the Moon, Pan-American Exposition, 1900 Figure 8-2 . A Trip to the Moon (inside attraction), 1901 Figure 8-3 . Advertisements, New York Clipper , October 4, 1902 Figure 9-1 . Plan of the grounds of the Paris Universal Exposition, New York Times , April 8, 1900 Figure 9-2 . The Moving Sidewalk, or Mobile Platform, at the Universal Exposition, Harper's Monthly Magazine , September 1900 Figure 10-1 . A Trip to the Moon —The Big Dipper Figure 10-2 . A Trip to the Moon —Phoebe, Gemini, and Saturn Figure 11-1 . Le avventure straordinarissime di Saturnino Farandola (1913) Figure 11-2 . The Conquest of the Pole (1912) Figure 12-1 . Ziegfeld Girl (1941) Figure 12-2 . Outtake, Moulin Rouge! (2001) Figure 12-3 . Rabbit's Moon (1950)

Acknowledgments
My greatest thanks go to the contributors who made this volume possible. Each responded with great erudition, insight, and creativity, and I am grateful for all their hard work in this collaborative effort. I am especially grateful to Murray Pomerance, who has shown great enthusiasm for this project from the very beginning when I first discussed it with him in Montreal in November 2006. I offer a special thanks to Paul Hammond, who generously agreed to participate in this volume by translating two essays by Méliès into English. I am extremely grateful to Dean Francisco Soto and the Office of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, which provided invaluable support for this project in the initial form of a CSI Summer Research Award that allowed me to examine Méliès material at the Bibliothèque du film in Paris and the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique in Brussels. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript and to acknowledge the support of James Peltz of SUNY Press.
Serge Bromberg, Jacques Malthête, and David Shepard graciously answered my questions about different versions of A Trip to the Moon and Joseph Eckhardt, Frank Kessler, Martin Marks, Luke McKernan, and Mary Elizabeth Ruwell helped me to obtain copies of several hard-to-find documents. Liza Zusman's diligent research in London and New York turned up many useful articles and letters.
Others who helped in various ways were Janet Bergstrom, Nico de Klerk, Paul Falzone, Emma Furderer, Jane Gaines, Doreen Gambichler, Magali Gaudin, Oliver Gaycken, Jaclyn Genega, Charlie Johnston, Giancarlo Lombardi, Jeffrey Man, Laurent Mannoni, Martin Marks, David Mayer, Charles Musser, James Naremore, Adrian Ramos-Rocchio, Régis Robert, Donald Sosin, Paul Spehr, Alexa Davidson Suskin, Christoph Wahl, Watie White, and Eve Wolf. The process of reprinting previously published essays was generously facilitated by Amy Van Dussen and Janet Infarinato of the George Eastman House, Mary Jaine Winokur of Heldref Publications, Kathy Elrick and Tim Legnani of Taylor and Francis, and Corinne Caradonna of Paris-Musées. Thanks to Paolo Cherchi Usai, André Gaudreault, and Thierry Lefebvre for revisiting their earlier work on Méliès and consenting to have it included in this book. Victoria Duckett and Viva Paci not only wrote chapters but also looked over translations from Italian.
Jennifer Chapman has been a consistent supporter of this book and drew my attention to nuances of the film that otherwise would have escaped me. Throughout the book's gestation, I have been inspired by my son Charlie, whose lively response to A Trip to the Moon has been truly infectious. He was always willing to watch the film one more time with me and seems to share my fascination with its many mysteries and surprises. This book is for him.
Matthew Solomon September 2010
Introduction
M ATTHEW S OLOMON
GEORGES MÉLIÈS … is the originator of the class of cinematograph films which … has given new life to the trade at a time when it was dying out. He conceived the idea of portraying comical, magical and mystical views, and his creations have been imitated without success ever since…. The “Trip to the Moon,” as well as … “The Astronomer's Dream”… are the personal creations of Mr. Georges Méliès, who himself conceived the ideas, painted the backgrounds, devised the accessories and acted on the stage.
—Complete Catalogue of Genuine and Original “Star” Films, 1905
If it is as a master of trick-films and fantastic spectacles that Méliès is best remembered, by no means all his pictures were of that type.
—Iris Barry, Curator, Museum of Modern Art Film Library, 1939
A Trip to the Moon (1902) is certainly Georges Méliès's best-known film, and of the tens of thousands of individual films made during cinema's first decad