Georges had, get this, 553 short movie directing credits from 1896 to 1913!! A few titles are A TERRIBLE NIGHT, CONJURING, THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, A NIGHTMARE, SEA BATHING, THE HALLUCINATED ALCHEMIST, THE DEVIL'S CASTLE, THE DEVIL'S LABORATORY, FOUR HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE, A TRIP TO THE MOON (1898), BLACK ART, A NOVICE AT X-RAYS, THE CAVE OF THE DEMONS, FANTASTICAL ILLUSIONS, THE DEVIL'S ISLAND, THE SNOW MAN, THE CLOWN AND THE AUTOMOBILE, THE DOCTOR AND THE MONKEY, THE DANGEROUS LUNATIC, THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY, THE CLOWN vs SATAN, THE HUMAN FLY, THE MAGICIAN AND THE IMP, BEWITCHED DUNGEON, ARTIST AND THE DUMMY, BEELZEBUB'S DAUGHTERS, THE MONSTER, FAUST IN HELL, THE CRAZY COMPOSER, SOAP BUBBLES, THE WITCH, TWO CRAZY BUGS, SEEIN' THINGS and THE GHOST OF SULFER MOUNTAIN! Wow, I'll bet those are some tough titles to come by!!.. Little Rufus The Gnat is here to start the show, so, push the big red 'GO' button there by the toaster oven, now, Rufus! Here's some silent music for... A TRIP TO THE MOON!
When you decide to go to the Moon, well, you have to build a spaceship first... In this case, a big bullet! 
Hey, looks like something interesting's going on over there! 
These Reubenesque beauties have the official duty of seeing the brave expolrers off! 
After the colossal cannon shoots the capsule into space, it finally comes to rest on the iconic face of The Man In The Moon! Even in the great British comedy, THE MIGHTY BOOSH, The Man In The Moon is a regular character. 
The explorers exit the capsule, then, are amazed when they watch the Earth rise into the sky. 
Ballet girls from the Theatre du Chatelet were used in these scenes. 
The explorers have to make their way through this amazing underground fungus garden! 
Here are the leaders of the Moon with their army of skeletal warriors, the Selenites. The creatures were played by acrobats from the Folies-Bergere.
The explorers escape and make their way to the capsule, followed in hot pursuit by the Selenites. One of the men jumps onto the rope tied to the ship and pulls it off its rocky perch... 
The capsule falls back to Earth and crashes into the ocean! 
Georges Méliès used miniatures, matte paintings, animation, double exposure and other camera and stage tricks to achieve his images. Director D.W. Griffith said, "I owe him everything" and Charles Chaplin called him "the alchemist of light!"
Talk about abandoning sound clips: Boom! You went right to a silent movie. (I love silent movies. Dame Edna to Gloria Swanson on a British chat show 40 yeras ago: "I greatly admired your silent period. I myself have never had one.")
ReplyDeleteAll of this, the Selenites, the chorus girls, falling off a moon cliff and not falling towards the moon but towards earth, the fungi gardens, all really happened when Neal & Buzz landed on the moon in 1969. I met Buzz once, and he told me so.
ReplyDelete(Well,I did meet Buzz once, and he told me, re: the way they had to urinate within their space suits, that "Neal was the first man to set foot on the moon, but I was the first man to pee in his pants on the moon." He is rightly proud of this accomplishment. But in that vacuum, there would be no peeing their names on the moon.)
Douglas, since you mentioned Buzz Aldrin - I worked at a studio in Canoga Park in the early nineties called Wonderworks, Buzz also worked there, and, somewhere, there is a group photo where I'm standing next to him!! Lucky me!..
ReplyDeleteI posed for a photo with Buzz in 1972, just he and I. (He was a guest that day on a radio show I was producing.) I used to have it on the wall beside a similar shot taken in the same place of myself and Leonard Nimoy, so I had me with a real space exporer and with a fake space explorer. Sadly, I no longer have those photos.
ReplyDeleteIsn't meeting someone who has stood on the moon awesome (in the original meaning of the word) and hard to really grasp.It's like: how can it be that I'm shaking a hand which has been to the Moon? I've met two, Aldrin and James Irwin. Mindboggling.
D - I couldn't get the smile off my face!
ReplyDeleteHey, if you can, check out "Hugo" in 3-D. It's still in some theaters. They're not really promoting the movie correctly (of course) but you know it's mostly about Melies, right? I had no idea until I sat down to watch it! The movie isn't perfect but there's some amazing things about it like seeing Melies' film clips in 3-D!
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