1902-2009 A Personal History

1902: Voyage to the Moon aka A Trip to the Moon

I went back to school today.  Thanks to my stellar class choices I have to read, among other fine works, The Last of the Mohicans and Bridget Jones's Diary.  So that's really exciting.  Yet even with my new reading list I managed to allocate ten minutes to watch Georges Melies' Une Voyage dans la Lune.  Now, I've seen this silent sci-fi masterwork before under much better circumstances.  I was fortunate enough to catch this at an old, historic theatre with a live organist, and really that's the only way to go.  For my purposes here I watched the entire film on YouTube.  Not the same experience.
The film opens with a debate in some sort of wizard congress (their hats suggest wizards or dunces) presumably about going to the moon.  After three and a half silent minutes of arguing they build a giant bullet that seems to seat about eight.  There's a party to celebrate and watch the launch where some chunky Rockettes push the bullet, now occupied by a white-bearded Yosemite Sam-lookin' fella in a top hat and some pals, into a giant gun.  Then, on man's first ever trip to the moon, the moon gets shot in the eye.  Right in the face.  The explorers hop out of the capsule with no suits, no breathing devices, and apparently no problems with that.  They set up camp, it snows on them, they encounter some strange looking contortionist moon-men who turn in to poofs of smoke when struck with canes, umbrellas or any other old-man accouterment.  They are taken prisoner and led to the moon-people's leader where Yosemite goes ballistic and throws their leader to the ground in a cloud of smoke.  They run; they're chased; they hop in their bullet and pull it off a cliff with an alien in tow and land in the ocean safe and sound.  This film is still stunning to look at today.  The surrealist sets and early special effects are amazing.  This being an early silent film there's not much to speak of as far as camera-work goes, so it looks like Tim Burton designed the sets for a Kevin Smith movie.  Fun Fact: Kevin Smith makes movies in an era where it is easy and practical to move a camera during a shot, but simply prefers to be visually stagnant. 
I guess going back to school is kind of like this movie.  I'm the Yosemite Sam old guy entering a foreign world inhabited by young, nimble creatures who are full of hot air.  I'll be sure to bring my cane.