ridiculous rating

Perfect cast and a good story

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

This film, "Excursion to the Moon", by Segundo de Chomón, was included in the three DVD set "Saved From the Flames"--a collection of mostly ephemeral movies that have managed to avoid turning to powder, catching fire or melting--something that usually happened with the nitrate film stock used up through the 1950s.While today this might shock you, back in the early days of cinema, film makers stole each other's work with abandon. So, if a studio came out with a film, a competitor would often re-film the entire movie once again and slap their name on it! It got so bad, that American Biograph (where D.W. Griffith worked) slapped an 'A-B' symbol right onto the sets to prove it was an original! And, in the case of the French genius Georges Méliès, MANY of his films were blatantly ripped off--so many that it makes it hard for film historians to know what is his and what is phony. In the case of "An Excursion to the Moon", Segundo de Chomón steals Méliès "A Trip to the Moon" and gives it a very similar title--hoping folks would mistake it for the original! What a jerk! Sometimes imitation is NOT the most sincere sort of flattery!I've seen the original movie about a dozen times and was amazed at just how close a copy this was and no attempt was made to create a new product! There were a few MINOR changes--but that is all (such as the ship landing in the Moon's mouth and not its eye). As I said, these folks were real jerks and I consider this film an outright theft--as any rational person would! So, technically it's very nice--but why not just watch the original?!By the way, this film was hand-colored using the Pathé-Frères colored stenciling technique. This made it a bit easier than hand-coloring the cells and produced a color that is pretty impressive for the era. However, it was so time-consuming and difficult that portions of films were colored--not the entire product.

The "trick" films of Georges Melies were extremely popular in their time, and inevitably they spawned imitators. Melies's most famous film, and probably his best, is his 1902 "Voyage to the Moon" ... inspired by Jules Verne's work, yet containing elements from HG Wells's novel "First Men in the Moon", published only the previous year. I've seen Melies's production sketches for that film: his lunar inhabitants (based on Wells's Selenites) were originally much more elaborate creatures, with lobster claws and complicated headpieces that never made it into the actual movie.Segundo de Chomon's "Excursion to the Moon" is virtually a shot-for-shot copy of Melies's opus: a strange decision, since Melies (notoriously a bad businessman) sold the prints of his films outright, so any exhibitor who wanted a piece of Melies's audience could merely buy one of the films rather than counterfeiting it. Many of the scenes in this "Excursion" are copied exactly from Melies's earlier film, notably a sequence in the lunar mushroom forest: one of the Earthmen plants his open umbrella in the lunar soil, and it instantly transforms into an enormous mushroom.The most famous image in all of Melies's films -- one of the most famous images in all of cinema -- is the two-shot sequence of his bullet-shaped spaceship hurtling towards the moon, then a crude cut to show the projectile striking the Man in the Moon in his right eye. For this remake (or rip-off), de Chomon seemed unwilling to copy that famous sequence precisely, so we see the Man in the Moon rather stupidly gawping with his mouth open for a protracted shot (much longer than in Melies's original), while it's obvious that the rocket is hurtling directly towards his gob-hole ... and of course it goes in. Melies's quick slapstick gag was more effective.Despite being a rip-off, this "Excursion" is in some ways actually an improvement over Melies's original "Voyage" ... notably in the opening sequence, employing a clever double-exposure to enable cartoon animation of drawings on a blackboard. Rather implausibly, we then see the spaceship being assembled by blacksmiths using anvils!Verne's original Moon novel (actually two linked novels) featured three astronauts (and some animals!) orbiting the moon without actually landing. Melies, for some reason, had six astronauts in his much shorter cinematic version, yet never defined them as individual characters. In this remake, de Chomon uses only five actors for the visitors from Earth, and the painted flats representing their spaceship take up a much smaller portion of the screen: definite improvements over Melies's version. Melies famously cast the Folies-Bergere girls as female cadets in tights, rather improbably using their dainty brawn to launch the projectile. Here, de Chomon casts a contingent of male soldiers for the same purpose: very slightly more plausibly, yet rather less pleasantly to the eye. He reserves his female performers for the moon itself, where they dance prettily as lunar ballerinas without ever actually doing any en-pointe work. Of course, the moon's atmosphere and gravity are identical to Earth's.Where "Excursion" clearly surpasses Melies's earlier "Voyage" is in the performances of the Selenites. Here, de Chomon casts some skilled acrobats who do some genuinely impressive gymnastics, including forward and backward handsprings (with poor amplitude) and mule kicks. In Melies's version, the unga-bunga moon-men merely waved spears and performed a few pathetic forward rolls. Here in "Excursion", unlike in Melies's film, the five Earthmen are captured by the Selenites and taken to their leader: the "Grand Lunar" in Wells's novel, described but never actually seen by that book's narrator.In both films, ludicrously, the ship makes its return to Earth by being pushed off a lunar cliff and falling all the way down ... an idea made even more preposterous because it's also a continuity error: in both films, the ship is seen to land on a lunar plain, yet somehow it's on a cliff for the trip homeward. The ship is also in left profile for the original moon-shot, yet in right profile for the return.Both films also feature a brief live-action sequence with the (miniature) spaceship dunked into an aquarium, while actual fish (out of scale, but with scales ... and clearly fresh-water species) swim obliviously past it, to depict the ship's splash landing in an ocean on Earth.Because considerable effort, money and talent went into the making of "Excursion to the Moon", I'm surprised that so many resources were expended on what's basically a copy of a previous film, especially since (as I've noted) the original was available for outright purchase. De Chomon shows clear talent and imagination here, so why did he expend them on copying another artist's work? On its own considerable merits, I'll rate "Excursion to the Moon" 8 out of 10, though Melies's original "Voyage to the Moon" rates at least a 9. Many of Melies's films are now lost: if his "Voyage to the Moon" had been one of those, this "Excursion" might now seem more impressive than it is.

This was another short silent film by Segundo de Choman that I found on the "Saved from the Flames" DVD collection. In this one, he attempts to remake Georges Melies' A Trip to the Moon. Except this one has the rocket landing in the Moon's mouth instead of eye. And there seems to be no villains to defeat. And there isn't much that's all that humorous or very exciting happening. Well, there's plenty of women dancing but that seems to be it. There's also a nice scene-within-a-scene when a blackboard shows a picture in motion of the rocket going to the moon to the future passengers. Okay, there's one real funny scene when, after the moon's mouth "swallows" the rocket, color-tinted flames come out of that mouth! Other than that, An Excursion to the Moon is only halfway as entertaining as A Trip to the Moon.

The DVD (Retour de Flamme vol 5 - if you're interested in early cinema and curios be sure to seek out all the discs under this umbrella title) on which I saw this 1908 short made no mention of this being a rip-off of George Melies' classic from six years before, choosing instead to consider it an alternative adaptation of the Jules Verne novel. Either way, there are a number of similar scenes, including the iconic one of the rocket landing on the moon - although here the rocket drifts into it's mouth instead of sticking in it's eye. The film is hand-coloured, but it's not done very well, resembling at times a child's colouring-in using a crayon. And because it is so similar to Melies' film, it is all too familiar and offers little new to keep the viewers attention - even at just over eight minutes long I found my attention wandering.