Le Voyage Dans La Lune- Kaitlin Scott

Despite its problematic understanding of race and gender, I really liked this film. I was very impressed with the sense of background and foreground in the film. There was a mixture of built sets and paintings. They’re fairly seamless. I’m particularly impressed with the loading the spacecraft cannon scene. The technical achievements of the film are fantastic. It uses jump cuts and dissolves to tell the story and show the passage of time. I don’t know much about the history of film, but to me this is evidence that by 1902 there is already an established language of film, and audiences understand what these editing techniques mean.

There are also a few times in the film where it’s clear that still photography and film haven’t entirely branched away from one another in the way that we think of the two fields today. For example, in the first scene, everyone is lined up in a very flat line much like people would for a class photo. That might because of the limitations of the set. Because they were using painted backgrounds, it may not have been feasible to move very far backward and forward.

It’s interesting how the film shows us a physical representation of great intellect. The voyagers are all male. They all seem very old. They wear the wigs of nobility and parliament. They also wear a sorcerer or alchemist’s robe. The opening shot has some of the most interesting pieces of costuming. Is this the same mixture of magic and science that we have seen before in the works of Frankenstein and some early Victorian concoctions?

Like Lisa, I’m disappointed by the roles that women played in this.  They really only seem to be well- wishers and marching band members. I’m not sure what to make of the gender assignments of the celestial bodies. Because of the mythology reference, it makes sense that Saturn is male. Do you think that Saturn and the stars brought that snow storm, and if so, why? Are they against the expedition? Should we be reading this as European might against the natural world?

I don’t think it’s just the moon men that show us overtones of imperialism. The grotesque shot of the moon’s eye being injured upon landing is also very telling. I wonder how original audiences took this. Did they find it funny? Did they find it a little scary? He appears to be bleeding some kind of thick moon blood. If the audience did find it funny, it has the tone of “Screw you, Moon. We own the universe.” The moon people they encounter are also interesting. Because of their spears, I wonder if we are supposed to read them as Africans. There is a patronizing idea that the European umbrella is a superior weapon to what the moon people have. When the explorers meet the moon people king, and then in typical European fashion kill him, I was almost expecting a King Solomon’s Mines scenario where they trick the simple natives with their technology. Perhaps in some way that’s exactly what happens. They are, after all, triumphant with only some broken umbrellas to help them.