A Trip to the Moon (Georges Melies, 1902)

Hey, it's me, Elena, and uh, me, June. We just got back from one of the greatest movies of all time. Yeah. Yeah, it was great. It is A Trip to the Moon from 1902, directed by George Méliès. It is considered, like, the start of cinema as we know it. Right, I see. So basically, this film was a game changer. It didn't exist as a vacuum, but what it exists as and when's the world of, like, two, three minute films with, like, a scene or two. This was a full blown 17 or, well, 12 to 17 minute spectacle where Méliès just went all out just throw whatever he could at the screen and it worked. Yeah. It's pretty magical. It was magical and the best part, we watched a version of it that was narrated by Méliès own script. Now, Méliès is an N10 for there to be a soundtrack, he had a script instead. This script was translated into English from the French and narrated and it was hilarious. Oh, oh, yeah, it was very funny. The way it was just so deadpan and so nonchalant as everything was just cartoonish and clownish. Exactly. That's the punchline. The whole point is the juxtaposition between, like, the obscenely crazy Stoffy throws the screen and the deadpan delivery of the narrator and what about the film itself? It is considered the first science fiction film, though it technically probably follows a science fantasy, which was a genre to an extent back then, where a group of magicians a group of astronomers build a rocket to the moon, launch in the moon, colonize it and come back home, hail the heroes despite being bumbling nincompoops and literally colonizing what was already there, which was a moon to civilization. Yeah, it's kind of funny isn't it? It is very funny. It's a comedy. Like, it's a comedy full on and it knows that it's like a satire and the alternate punchline is having that narration that just, it's so good. So good. "Trip to the Moon" 1902 with English narration by Millie is. That is the version I would highly recommend if you don't want to watch any other version of the movie. This is the version I'd recommend watching. It is a must watch movie anyway you put it though. Absolutely. So what are your thoughts on the acting? The acting barely matters when they're all just bumbling buffoons, but they do do their job well. I mean, the main character's name is played by the writer/director of the entire film and the main character is also the actor, who is the director/writer, Millie is. Millie is, play as a character named Professor Baben Foudié, which is nonsense. It's pure nonsense and that's the whole point. It's a nonsensical, whimsical look at what cinema could be like in the future and what it really was like in the future. It was so whimsical and nonsensical and it was just so fun. Yeah. And I'll see you next time for our video, for our podcast, our podcast sorry, on Pong by Atari. See you then. (bright music)