1. Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902)

Title: Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon)
Genre: Short, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
IMDB User Score: 8.3/10 Stars
Year: 1902
Language: French
Format: Silent, Black And White
Length: 14 Minutes
Director: Georges Mêlies
Producer: Georges Mêlies
Screenplay: Georges Mêlies (Adapted from the novel Le Voyage dans la Lune by Jules Verne)
Photography: Michaut, Lucian Tainguy
Music: ?
Cast: Victor Andre, Bleuette Bernon, Brunnet, Jeanne d’Alcy, Henri Delannoy, Depierre, Farjaut, Kelm, Georges Mêlies
Oscar: No
Oscar Nomination: No
Budget: 10,000 French Francs
Revenue: None
Reason it’s Significant:

- Revolutionary length (14 minutes as opposed to the standard 2 minutes films of the time)
- Experimented with some of the most famous (and now; common) editing techniques ever, such as superimpositions and dissolves.
- The first science fiction movie ever
- Combined cinematography with stage magic (the director was a world famous magician), something that remains highly unique still to this day
- Opened the doors for future filmmakers to create fictitious films. Most films of the time portrayed daily life and true events.
- The first animated film ever (a sequence towards the end is pure animation)
- Inspiration and subject matter of the Smashing Pumpkins song “Tonight, Tonight”


The first film on our list is the true definition of a “classic”. I would be hard pressed to find a single person who doesn’t vaguely recognize the image of the anthropomorphic moon with a spaceship wedged in its eye. I must admit I genuinely enjoyed this film. For only being 14 minutes long, it portrays the quintessential science fiction adventure story while showcasing special effects that really are AMAZING given how primitive the technology was.

The story is silly and unrealistic, to say the very least. But the cool thing about it is you can actually SEE the plethora of movie themes this movie created. It has everything. A scientist embarking on an ambitious journey, political and scientific opposition from his peers, a party of diverse characters embarking on the quest to a strange world, an alien environment full of wondrous oddities, a menacing race of cruel natives and their tyrannical king, and the heroes’ eventual daring escape from the world to try and get home; I could probably name a hundred movies just off the top of my head with most if not all of these themes.

Besides being impressive from a historical standpoint, it’s also fairly advanced in its own right, for the time period. Each scene is filled with elaborate hand-drawn backdrops and the movie has a very unique blend of cinema techniques and real-life sleight of hand magic tricks. Apparently, they even found a version of this film where every frame had been individually hand-colored. Wow. The film also has an undeniable sense of style. From getting to the moon via cannon, to a landscape brimming with gigantic mushrooms, everything is surreal, symbolic, and highly stylized. While the film may be extremely silly and, well, trippy (The sinister alien race, it turns out, “explode into a thousand pieces at the slightest touch of an umbrella”. What) ; One cannot deny the inherent irresistible charm found in this timeless film.