Excursion to the Moon (1908)

Original title

Excursion dans la lune

Directed by

Segundo de Chomón

Genre

comedy film, fantasy film, silent film, science fiction film

Country

France

Runtime

7 min

Rating

5.3 of 10 from 30 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A group of astronomers build a rocket and travel to the moon. They meet strange moon creatures and bring one back to Earth.

whimsicalplayfullightheartedcolorfulvisualsimpleclassicsilent

What happens

Excursion to the Moon (French: Excursion dans la lune) is a 1908 French silent trick film directed by Segundo de Chomón. The production was supervised by Ferdinand Zecca, designed by V. Lorant-Heilbronn, and released by Pathé Frères. The film is an unauthorized remake, and an almost shot-by-shot copy, of Georges Méliès's 1902 film A Trip to the Moon. The film follows Méliès's scenario closely and includes many of its features, with some variations: for example, the Selenites are not vulnerable to umbrellas, but rather appear and disappear at will; the capsule lands inside the Man in the Moon's open mouth rather than hitting its eye; and the Selenite who returns to Earth is a "dancing moon-maiden" who is betrothed at the end of the film to one of the astronomers. This film has occasionally been misidentified as a work by Méliès. Of the film's 180 meters, 72 were colorized using a Pathé stencil process. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• A Trip to the Moon (1902)
• The Astronomer's Dream (1898)
• Long Distance Wireless Photography (1908)
• A Trip to Jupiter (1909)
• The Man in the Moon (1909)
• The Eclipse, or the Courtship of the Sun and Moon (1907)
• Woman in the Moon (1929)
• The Duke's Good Joke (1908)