Today I watched the restored, colorized version of A Trip to the Moon from 1902 (but the restored, colorized version from 2011 with music by Air). One of the first feature films ever made with a storyline and an extensive cast, it tells the story (a story!) of a trip to the moon, with conflict! intrigue! suspense! action! comedy! Everything a film needs. A “revolution” at fourteen minutes, Schneider’s book suggests that this is the first chance a film had to present a purely cinematic fictional “fantasy constructed for pure entertainment,” opening a door to the future of film as a grand escapist platform.
You can watch this film on YouTube as it is in the Public Domain.
I thought this was a charming little film – mainly for its connections to the Tonight Tonight video. That music video has a fascinating origin story outlined in the documentary about Wayne White called Beauty is Embarassing – an incredible film where White discusses his work with puppetry, MTV/Smashing Pumpkins, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, and other great art projects.
This film is pretty revolutionary in a lot of ways. As I watched I couldn’t escape what I think of when I think early film…all of which don’t have a plot, and are just short snippets of something happening. Like The Horse and The Kiss. I also thought of the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret which romanticizes the fictional genesis of this film along with the Paris film industry.
This was a gorgeous film in its use of stop-film tricks, weird theatrical cardboard sets that at times were two dimensional and at times three dimensional, beautiful and complex costumes and makeup, and some really impressive special effects. A pleasure to watch in its new colorized incantation that added a somewhat extra level of magic to the film. Furthermore, having been scored by one of my favorite bands, AIR, it was a joy to experience. Audiences at the time must have been astonished.
Garrett Zecker 
Another great poster.
I actually liked the movie Hugo, mostly because the story of Melies is very interesting and touching. I bought an entire DVD stuffed with his movies and a lot of backstory on his work and life and that was truly facinating.
Incidentally my seven year old son loves this movie and can watch it again and again.
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Hugo is certainly a great film – in many ways it carries the responsibility of using computer graphics so heavily and also needing to pull it off in such a perfect way, and it succeeds. Sacha Baron Cohen steals the show in that film. We haven’t watched it since its release, but it is on the 1001 and we will be revisiting it.
In that particular case, my experience with the book overlaps my experience with the film. I am aware that this is going to happen many times over the 1001 list. Sometimes I am going to find some films that work better, sometimes some that achieve the same thing, and sometimes films that fail. Frankly, in Hugo I couldn’t find anything further than Selznick’s beautiful, quiet book (and you can read my review of that over on Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/261354731?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1), but I also see great value in using the form to create something absolutely new and different. In this case, I thought Hugo the film was a completely different story, where when I read the book Seconds and we then watched the film for the 1001, I found that the film was actually quite better than the source material.
This is quite an adventure!
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