Le Voyage Dans La Lune, or A Trip to the Moon

From "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" (henceforth to be referred to as The Book): "A Trip to the Moon directly reflects the histrionic personality of its director, Georges Melies, whose past as a theater actor and magician influences the making of the movie.  The film boldly experiments with some of the most famous cinematic techniques, such as superimpositions, dissolves, and editing practices that would be widely used later on.  Despite the simplicity of its special effects, the film is generally considered the first example of science-fiction cinema.  It offers many elements characteristic of the genre-a spaceship, the discovery of a new frontier-and establishes most of its conventions."

As an avid fan of sci-fi, it really was a treat to watch the movie that pretty much paved the way for the genre.  I haven't seen many films of this era, but I know that for the time period it was pretty damn long.  Most "movies" of the time were topping out at about 2 minutes, because the process was so expensive and time consuming, but this one runs just under 12 minutes.  It has a great storyline; a group of astronomers meet and decide to take a trip to the moon, and while there they encounter the moon's hostile inhabitants, Selians, who capture them and take them to their king.  The astronomers find that they can destroy the Selians by hitting them with their umbrellas, and escape thusly.  After climbing back into their shuttle, they plummet back down to Earth, sink to the bottom of the ocean, and because of the air inside the shuttle float back to the top, and are then rescued by a boat and brought back to Paris.  I expected the roughness of the film to be distracting, but surprisingly, it wasn't.  There were only a couple of shots where someone jumped from one side of the room to the other where a couple of frames were taken out, and the dissolves from one scene to another made scene openings a little difficult to see, but overall, for the time period it's a rather impressive piece.

If you'd like to watch it, it can be seen here.

Next movie:  The Great Train Robbery.