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

272 Pages·2011·29.642 MB·English

by  Matthew Solomon

Fantastic Voyages
of the
Cinematic Imagination
Georges Méliès’s Trip to the Moon
(cid:118)
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
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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
(cid:118)
“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.
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction
Matthew Solomon 1
1. A Trip to the Movies: Georges Méliès, Filmmaker and
Magician (1861–1938) 25
Paolo Cherchi Usai
2. Theatricality, Narrativity, and Trickality: Reevaluating the
Cinema of Georges Méliès 31
André Gaudreault
3. A Trip to the Moon: A Composite Film 49
Thierry Lefebvre
4. First-Footing on the Moon: Méliès’s Debt to Verne and
Wells and His Influence in Great Britain 65
Ian Christie
5. “Distance Does Not Exist”: Méliès, le Cinéma, and the Moon 81
Murray Pomerance
6. Shooting into Outer Space: Reframing Modern Vision 97
Tom Gunning
7. A Trip to the Moon as Féerie 115
Frank Kessler
vii
viii Contents
8. A Trip to the Moon as an American Phenomenon 129
Richard Abel
9. A Trip to the Fair; or, Moon-Walking in Space 143
Matthew Solomon
10. The Stars Might Be Smiling: A Feminist Forage into a
Famous Film 161
Victoria Duckett
11. Impossible Voyages and Extraordinary Adventures in
Early Science Fiction Cinema: From Robida to Méliès and
Marcel Fabre 183
Antonio Costa
12. No One-Way Ticket to the Moon 201
Viva Paci
Appendix 225
A Fantastical...Trip to the Moon 227
Georges Méliès, “Answer to Questionary [sic]” 233
Georges Méliès, “The Marvelous in the Cinema” 235
Georges Méliès, “The Importance of the Script” 241
List of Contributors 245
Index 251
Illustrations
Figure 0-1. One of a number of substitution splices in
A Trip to the Moon 7
Figure 0-2. A Trip to the Moon—the captured Selenite displayed
for the crowd 9
Figure 0-3. Detail of caricature by Méliès [pseud., Geo. Smile],
La Griffe, January 23, 1890 10
Figure 0-4. A Trip to the Moon (detail)—the statue of Barbenfouillis 11
Figure 0-5. Excursion dans la lune (1908) 13
Figure 2-1. A Trip to the Moon—On the moon 39
Figure 2-2. A Trip to the Moon—In space 40
Figure 2-3. A Trip to the Moon—Above the ocean 40
Figure 2-4. A Trip to the Moon—At the bottom of the sea 41
Figure 2-5. Fairyland—Diagram of the various camera positions,
tableaux 23–29 43
Figure 3-1. Half of a stereoscope card, Le Voyage dans la lune—
“Le Canon” (Collection Cinémathèque française) 56
Figure 3-2. Stereoscope card, Le Voyage dans la lune—“Le Roi
Cosmos” (Collection Cinémathèque française) 57
Figure 5-1. A Trip to the Moon—drawings of earth and moon;
moon in distance 80
Figure 8-1. A Trip to the Moon, Pan-American Exposition,
1900 131
ix
x Illustrations
Figure 8-2. A Trip to the Moon (inside attraction), 1901 133
Figure 8-3. Advertisements,New York Clipper, October 4, 1902 137
Figure 9-1. Plan of the grounds of the Paris Universal
Exposition,New York Times, April 8, 1900 145
Figure 9-2. The Moving Sidewalk, or Mobile Platform, at the
Universal Exposition, Harper’s Monthly Magazine,
September 1900 153
Figure 10-1. A Trip to the Moon—The Big Dipper 160
Figure 10-2. A Trip to the Moon—Phoebe, Gemini, and Saturn 172
Figure 11-1. Le avventure straordinarissime di Saturnino
Farandola (1913) 182
Figure 11-2. The Conquest of the Pole (1912) 189
Figure 12-1. Ziegfeld Girl (1941) 207
Figure 12-2. Outtake,Moulin Rouge! (2001) 212
Figure 12-3. Rabbit’s Moon (1950) 213
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
xi