Le Voyage dans la lune is Georges Méliès’ most famous film. On its release it was triumphantly received and, according to the director,about 500 copies were sold – excluding pirate copies. Conceived on the eve of the space age, which – from Konstantin Tsiolkovsky to Neil Armstrong – would light up the technological 20th century, this masterpiece of ingenuity is a compendium of turn-of-the-century lunar fantasy.
There is no question that the spirit of Jules Verne hovers over the film; however, this does not mean it should be considered a simpleadaptation of either From the Earth to the Moon or Around the Moon, contrary to what Méliès himself maintained towards the end of hislife.
Carefully composed, it draws inspiration from a wide variety of sources: A Trip to the Moon, a cyclorama that met with success at the 1901Panamerican Exhibition in Buffalo; Voyage dans la lune, Jacques Offenbach’s opéra-féerie, which was staged at the Théâtre de la Gaité in 1875;H.G. Wells’ 1901 The First Men in the Moon; and many more. Le Voyage dans la lune is emblematic of Méliès’ method, based on appropriations and citations.

Thierry Lefebvre