A Single Shot
The shot
The moon grows closer, haloed by clouds. A face appears (a man in makeup). The moon raises its eyebrows and widens its eyes before the right one is punctured by a rocket shot from earth. In the hand-colored version of the film, the goo that pours from the wound is bright red. In the black and white version it looks like vanilla ice cream. The moon licks its lips.
The plan
The start of Georges Méliès’ Le Voyage dans la Lune is ridiculous. Vaguely academic men (something like wizards, or drunken Galileos) stack themselves in a lecture hall and erupt into a frenzy at the suggestion by the absurdly named Prof. Barbenfouillis — a name that may be an elaborate and possibly vulgar pun on his beard, his insanity, or his academic status — that they simple shoot a rocket out of a cannon to reach the moon. The pyramid formation of the attendant astronomers leads the eye to the high window of the observatory and the glowing moon just outside of it.
We are, I think, supposed to be laughing at these men. They end up on the moon anyway.
The music
I always half-expect Dean Martin to begin singing “That’s Amore” just as the moon starts to taste its own blood. Even before I could have conceivably seen Le Voyage dans la Lune, I had, in my mind’s eye, the image of the moon, stabbed in the eye like a big pizza pie. The two discreet works are so linked in my mind that it is shocking to encounter the actual scores for the film.
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The black and white version is scored to one of those jaunty piano recreations. It is meant to invoke the period, but here it feels especially misplaced. The only thing about the score that changes is its speed. The shot of the moon still stands out, but gets run over by the score, which races toward the landing sequence.
The restored and colorized version is scored by the French synth-rock duo Air. The grace in this score is that it gives the shot of the moon an interlude that is somehow both angelic and ominous. As the moon approaches, the music swells, but the sudden appearance of the rocket is not marked. The score transitions to a mournful piano tune — stressing the underlying sadness of the film, but erasing the farce. The rest of the score is random, as if one queued up a record and allowed it to play through the thirteen-minute film without any consideration for the images on the screen.
This is why “That’s Amore” is better: it is funny, but also sad. It comes from a distant world, a world erased by men. Napoli or the Cyclops moon.
The moon
The men look up at the moon and decide to take it. They stab it in the eye. It bleeds and loses its face. They are captured by the lizard men. They kill the lizard king. They escape back to earth by falling straight off a moon cliff and into the ocean. A ferry drags them back to shore. They build a statue of the Professor. His hand is huge and points to the sky. His foot stomps the face of a monstrous moon, eye stuck with a red rocket.
Science fiction
This central image of violence, beauty, and wit serves as a microcosm of the film. It winks at the violence caused when man points at something and tries to own it. It exposes this concept as both absurd and gruesome.
At a time when film itself was still something out of science fiction, Méliès’ delivered to viewers the very same thing that keeps us coming back to science fiction over and over again: a funhouse mirror held up to the audience. He stacks wonder on wonder, burning the image of the moon into our collective skulls, but asking that we not forget the dancing astronomers at the end, trampling on the head of the moon, parading the captured lizard man like a trophy.
The man in the moon, licking the blood from his face.
