A Trip to the Moon (1902)

Artists may benefit from time and wealth, but they shouldn't require them. In fact, lack of resources can be a blessing, because it can make you try harder.

George Méliès hardly lacked resources, at least in 1902. The Frenchman owned and directed the Robert-Houdin theatre in Paris for more than 30 years; he was the son of a shoe manufacturer; a landowner; a gifted magician, actor and caricaturist, with a hefty inheritance that left him free to perfect his skills. He was lucky, too. Méliès shared building space with Antoine Lumière, father to the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, who introduced France to projected cinema in 1895. The Lumières saw the movie camera as a tool for science. Méliès, the showman, saw something else. By 1897, he was running the first dedicated movie studio in the world, producing popular films to be screened in fairground tents. These films, like the studio itself, were state-of-the-art. Méliès had it all.

Yet nowadays, Méliès’ films seem striking for what they lack. They have no sound, no close-ups and no camera movement. Few last more than fifteen minutes. Since they were meant to be narrated live, they don’t even have intertitles. Méliès relied on almost none of the technology, techniques or conventions that would be old hat even fifteen years later. But he achieved an almost perfect little film. You’ll like it.

A Trip to the Moon (La voyage dans la lune) follows the adventures of six scientists, all members of France’s renowned Institute of Incoherent Astronomy. The scientists commission the building of a gigantic cannon, which will blast them toward the moon in a hollow shell. The launch is successful; upon arrival, the scientists battle the moon’s goblinoid inhabitants, are captured, and then escape the clutches of the King of the Moon. They retreat to their shell, which tips off a cliff and falls back to Earth, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean. The heroes are towed to shore by steamship and honoured with a parade. 

 

That’s it. You’ll eat sandwiches that require more investment of time than A Trip to the Moon will. However, you’ll see few full-length films that better reward a second look, or a third, or a fourth. Were it no good at all, A Trip to the Moon would still be a valuable lesson in filmmaking.
For Méliès, a theatre man, the camera simply replaced the audience. He positioned it far to one end of his studio, while the rest of the space was devoted to the floor-level stage and its various props. Performances took place opposite the camera, facing the daylight. (At the time, electric light was too weak for filmmaking, meaning Méliès could not work at night. His studio functioned like a greenhouse).

Méliès dressed his actors and dancers in outrageous costumes and choreographed them precisely to make the most of his slim running times. He also painted his own tableaus (backgrounds), which were used much as they would be in a stage production. The studio was outfitted with enough pulleys, wires, and trapdoors to film almost any kind of scene without budging the camera.

Méliès could’ve moved his camera; other directors were already doing it. However, look at what he produces by leaving it still: Every one of A Trip to the Moon’s brief scenes is teeming with activity. Robed, pointy-hatted astronomers jostle with tarty rocket-girls, cannon-building workmen and acrobatic denizens of the moon. The actors shove each other in and out of frame, as though competing to show you the best thing in the world. None wait for the lens to find them. Everyone rushes, everyone is silly, and they’re all having fun.

Like all great films, A Trip to the Moon knows what it’s trying to do and supports it ably. Méliès’ tableaus squash a double-load of detail into every scene, losing nothing. They are cartoonish, distorting perspective for the sake of whimsy, rather than to trick the eye. When the narrator describes the spacecraft as built ‘above the rooftops of the city,’ we see this literally—actors stand on a row of painted rooftops too small to be believably in the foreground. Nobody cares. 

The characters in A Trip to the Moon have no personalities, but they’re one with this craziness surrounding them. Standing on a tower, straining to watch the giant cannon being cast in the ‘distance,’ one scientist produces a telescope, clearly two-dimensional, designed in the same cartoon style as the set he is standing on. It works fine, of course; just as the rooftops hold when he stands on them. Check it out in this clip, at about 3:40.

As the actors become the sets, so the sets join the cast. On the moon, Méliès shows the scientists slumbering beneath a sky filled with stars, planets and (oddly enough) a crescent moon, all occupied by actors in Grecian garb. Even better is the moon launch that brought them there. In this famous scene, we see the moon grow as the shell approaches it; suddenly it has a human face, then—wham!—the shell pierces its eye.

A Trip to the Moon was a critical success for George Méliès, and thanks to his creativity and technical excellence, it still entertains. Its duration doesn’t hurt, either—even a great movie cannot hold attention for long without deviating from medium shots.

How appropriate that this film’s themes are discovery and endeavour. With one foot still planted in the theatrical world, Méliès was himself challenging a new frontier. A Trip to the Moon is one of cinema’s first great artworks, filmed before cinema had any masters. To see it today is to wonder how Méliès produced so much from so little. It is also to remember the potential of limited resources, once great talent is brought to bear upon them.

Reflections: Have You Heard This One?

A silent comic walks into a bar.

And knocks himself out.

***

Last week, I wrote about the struggles we sometimes face when trying to enjoy silent dramas. I blamed most of it on the drift of social values between the early 20th century and today, which forces old movies to make unreasonable demands on our sympathy. This week, I want to look at silent comedy, which has aged better, because it gives us more while demanding less.

Silent comedy is more than people trying to be funny on film. Actors were doing silly things or performing vaudeville acts in front of a lens as far back as Thomas Edison’s time. These early performers had talent, but they didn’t take advantage of the camera’s potential; they just did their stage routines without a live audience.

True film comedy took time to develop and peaked in the 1920s, when features by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd pulled major box office. The films were good too—inventive and joyful, taking full advantage of their soundless medium. They perfected physical comedy (‘slapstick’) and they’re still funny today. So what’s comedy got that drama hasn’t?

We return to sympathy: The blood and bones of good drama and pure cyanide for most comedies. Comedy is cruel; even the gentlest joke causes us to laugh at someone else. What happens if we sympathize too much with a comic character? Who’s the joke on then? Silent comedies don’t have to build sympathy for characters at all. The irony, though, is that they often do it better than dramas can today.

Charlie Chaplin made his Tramp rich in comedy..... ...but it was tragedy that filled the costume and made it believeable.

Social values change quickly; social pressures do not. We can still relate to silent standards like meeting a fiancé’s parents, struggling to join clubs and teams, being bullied, or being broke; we’ll never escape the realities of physical pain and mortal danger. These are universals that slapstick constantly exploits.

Silent drama’s characters suffer these ills, too. However, we are expected to care for them, which is taxing if they aren’t so likeable anymore. Comic protagonists are often lazy, crooked, or stupid, and their goals less noble. They spend entire films trying to avoid punishment, detection or responsibility. When they seek love, it’s often from a foul person. These characters may be charming, but funny people usually are. So when they get their asses kicked, we’re okay with it.

Silent comedies have another advantage over dramas: They need less plot. Sure, silent films in general have thin plots, but the dramas have to fill their running times with supporting characters, twists and moments of pathos. The percentage of scenes that could lose a modern viewer goes up. Slapstick comedies, meanwhile, get a better deal; they can fill their scenes with ageless physical comedy. Yes, the best comedies integrate those scenes with a plot, but at the very least, they offer enough tumbles, brawls and lethal stunts to keep you entertained. (They needn’t be sublime, either. One of my favourite comedic scenes features Fatty Arbuckle hurling a piano through a wall to crush someone in the next room.)

Probably the best endorsement of silent comedy is to say that when it fails, it’s usually for the same reasons sound comedies do. Bad pacing, overacting and predictability kill silent comedians just as dead. For example, I’ll never understand the appeal of Al St. John, a popular supporting actor in silent comedies (and later, sound westerns). Al was a terrific acrobat, but he lacked a low gear. Every reaction was an overreaction—everything was electric and big, as though he was playing to the back row instead of the camera only feet in front of him. Al’s work tires me out because he never projected stillness. All the great silent comedians mastered that, and used the quiet to make their pratfalls and reaction-shots stand out.

Al St. John

Silent gags bomb worst when they make you wish for sound; The Navigator (1924) provides a memorable example. Buster Keaton and his female lead are running scared during a night aboard an abandoned ship, having been spooked by several gags already. Rough waters shake them up some more and jar a nearby phonograph, which begins playing ‘Asleep in the Deep.’ The lyrics begin:

Danger is near thee/
Many brave hearts are asleep in the Deep/

Buster and his girl are terrified by what they hear, but we can only read the lyrics, which are superimposed over the phonograph. Watching this, I always wonder what the singer’s voice sounded like. A deep, male voice, I guess? If the song was popular, the joke must have worked better in 1924. But Keaton isn’t betting on that. He portrays the last lyric, 'B-E-W-A-R-E,' on a slant, as though to illustrate how we would have heard it, if we could hear anything. Were The Navigator made a few years later, Keaton could have captured the lyrics on a record and played it for the theatre’s audience. The joke would have aged better.

Buster Keaton excelled as the calm centre of chaos.

Maybe it all comes down to freedom. Some silent dramas shackle their characters to old-fashioned values, while silent comedies, at their best, make everything possible. Slapstick challenges all physical limits, and when a silent comedian enters a room, every item in front of him—lamp, pitcher, picture frame; doorway, window, rug or chair—crackles with possibility. This is a world made of potential and it’s still fun.

Mind you, ‘fun’ need not mean ‘funny.’ Next week, I’ll consider how this potential can favour another silent genre: horror.

College (1927)

It’s funny how College goes wrong.

Here’s one of Buster Keaton’s least praised silent features. College gets (and maybe earns) little elbow room next to The Navigator (1924) or The General (1926) or several of Keaton’s other films. To love it is to love a bunch of scenes that support only themselves. Reshuffle them and the plot would still hold—as would Keaton’s character, Ronald, who doesn’t so much develop as change direction.

But these facts only keep College (1927) from being a great Keaton film. It is still a set of brilliant routines, and if it’s mediocre by Keaton’s standards, at least he knew it. In fact, because he knew it, College manages a fascinating turn. What begins as a gag flick becomes, in the third act, Keaton’s greatest inside joke.

College opens on the day of Ronald’s high school graduation, at which he’s to give the valedictory address. The weather is wet; Ronald arrives late and takes the last chair in the graduation hall, in front of a radiator. This sets up the movie’s first big gag, as the radiator’s heat causes Ronald’s soaked suit to shrink. He is called to receive his diploma and makes a rambling speech about the evils of athletics while his waistcoat bursts its buttons. No one but his mother stays seated; not even his friend Mary (Anne Cornwall).

Outside, Mary charges straight at Ronald. “Your speech was ridiculous,” the intertitle snaps. “Anyone prefers an athlete to a weak-knee’d teachers’ pet.” Mary goes on: “When you change your mind about athletics, I’ll change my mind about you.” Then she drives away with Jeff, the school’s idiot jock.

Ronald is crushed. Like most Keaton heroes, he’s fallen for a woman who cannot love him unless he changes. Her demand becomes his call-to-action: Ronald resolves to earn Mary’s love by embracing sport. To do this, he must follow her (and Jeff) to Clayton College in the fall.

Cue next fall: Ronald arrives at Clayton carrying a thick suitcase. From it he unpacks football pads, cleats, a full baseball uniform, a catcher’s chest protector, ‘how to’ guides to various sports and a photograph of Mary. Clearly, Ronald’s studies have shifted over the summer. None of the gear looks used.

Now College takes a detour, as Ronald becomes a campus soda jerk. We first see the senior jerk, lobbing scoops of ice cream and sliding glasses down the bar with smooth ease. Ronald follows his pattern exactly, but always a half-second behind. Ronald’s scoops hit the floor, not the shaker; his drinks slide past one customer and into the lap of another. It’s all so precisely—perfectly—wrong.

Jobs alternate with athletic tryouts. In the next scene, Ronald is nearly killed trying to make the Clayton baseball team. Following that, he loses his restaurant job after spilling soup on his left cheek, revealing blackface makeup. (The black restaurateur is not amused). Then it’s on to track and field, where Ronald makes himself a whirling threat at hammer throw and snaps his vaulting pole upon ascent. Earnest though he may be, Ronald’s no athlete.

Ronald’s no athlete? We accept this because College demands it, but what are we seeing here? When Ronald finishes the hurdles by toppling over each one with the tip of his shoe, at the height of his leap, we’re just impressed. A real klutz would crash through them all.

The track scene transforms College. Until now, we’ve seen Ronald in suits and uniforms, always full-length and long-sleeved. Now he’s wearing only a tank top and shorts, and the illusion is shot: Keaton’s body is compact and fat-free; every muscle is toned and perfect in its place. The bookworm is an acrobat; ‘Ronald’ is a poor disguise. We give up on him, content to watch Buster perform.

The movie fights back. It loads the third act with more plot than the first two combined. First, Ronald joins the Clayton rowing team as a coxswain (a position that uses his brain and ignores his coordination). Then, on the day of the race, Jeff bursts into Mary’s dorm room and announces he’s been expelled. Knowing that Mary, too, can be expelled if caught with a man in her room, Jeff locks himself in. Apparently, this will encourage her to marry him.

Ronald’s boat is victorious. He returns to the locker room, alone. The phone rings. It’s Mary, who has somehow distracted Jeff and called the locker room in hope of reaching Ronald. Her success is too much of a longshot, but hey, we’re not going to root for the rapist. It also allows Keaton to deliver the film’s last major gag, and it’s a doozey.

Ronald becomes a superhero. He sprints to Mary’s dorm like an Olympian, hurdling shrubs, long-jumping pondwater and pole-vaulting (with a wooden post) through her second-storey window. He levels Jeff with a dish thrown like a discus and tackles him until he flees. It’s an electric scene, and it makes no sense.

Well, it makes sense if it’s Buster Keaton we’re watching, not Ronald. We knew Buster could do that stuff all the time.

Keaton cheats us here. It’s one thing to believe in the power of love, but we never saw Ronald improve at any of these sports before now, much less master them. We’ve been had, and the movie owes us one. Fortunately, it delivers; following this miracle-scene with one of Keaton's best endings.

College, for all its flaws, is a rare gem: a comedy that gets funnier when you laugh with it, not at it. Poor Roland is dead, but who can speak ill of him now?

Where to find College:
My copy of College is part of Kino International’s ‘The Art of Buster Keaton’ box set, which is widely available. Unfortunately, the set’s selling point is completeness, not extras. This DVD includes three of Keaton’s short films: Hard Luck, The Blacksmith (both 1921), and The Electric House (1922). Look for it here.