A TRIP TO THE MOON

DIRECTIONS: Read the following articles to familiarize yourself

with “A Trip to the Moon.” Then, while watching the film and after,
answer the guiding questions found on page two.

Link to “A Trip to the Moon;” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGII3KEs63U

By 1900 the movies had already witnessed color, sound and widescreen, quickly ignored
innovations that wouldn't make their mark for several more decades. By contrast, the first special
effects extravaganza in 1902 quickly captivated moviegoers and proved to have a more lasting
effect. This early hit film was A Trip to the Moon (1902), directed, produced, written and starring
French film pioneer Georges Melies.

Today the 12-minute A Trip to the Moon might seem a bit primitive, but just imagine what it was
like when the entire idea of moving images was still a new and even peculiar idea. Despite the
intervening years and technical advances, the film's immense charm and wit haven't aged at all and
it still appeals to modern audiences. (The rock band Smashing Pumpkins based a video on A Trip to
the Moon but not everybody has their film savvy: When the video showed up on Pop-Up
Videos much of the information about the original film was incorrect.)

The basic premise of A Trip to the Moon is lifted from Jules Verne's novel From the Earth to the
Moon, though Melies actually let his characters land on the moon rather than just circle it. In the
film, a scientist decides to visit the moon by having a hollow capsule shot from a giant cannon
(which, incidentally, won't work in real life so you can cancel that order with the Acme Cannon
Company). Once there the scientist has some comic adventures with the moon's inhabitants and
finds a surprising new use for his trusty umbrella.

Melies was a magician and stage producer, not unlike the later Orson Welles. (Oddly enough, early
in his career Melies took over the theater of the world-famous magician Jean-Eugene Robert-
Houdin, the source of the stage name Houdini for an American boy who himself later became a
minor film star and gave a vaudevillian child named Keaton the nickname Buster.) Like so many
others, Melies was stunned by the 1895 showings of the Lumieres' actuality-based films and
immediately began making them himself, turning out some 78 films the following year. They were
only about a minute long but this was still a create-as-you-go technology. However, Melies' magical
and theatrical background showed through in a variety of sensationalist and trick-oriented films,
including in 1897 what is probably the first vampire movie. (Ever since, historians have credited the
Lumieres for the idea of film documenting reality and Melies for film as changing reality, though the
distinction has never been that clear-cut.)

A Trip to the Moon was a large undertaking for its time, costing 10,000 francs and requiring four
months to make. Melies used machinery and techniques from theater but also experimented with
clay models and costumes of paper-based board. He raided the local music halls for actors, but
went to the celebrated Folies-Bergere for skilled acrobats to play the rowdy moon people. One of
the actresses, Jeanne d'Alcy, became Melies' second wife in 1926. Melies released the film in France
in August 1902 and shortly afterwards pirated copies started appearing in the U.S. (some by
Edison) since it wasn't under copyright there. This caused Melies to open an American office soon
afterwards.

A Trip to the Moon was just one of 23 films Melies made in 1902. You can get an idea of his range
in such titles as The Man with the Rubber Head, The Treasures of Satan, The Eruption of Mount
Pelee and The Coronation of Edward VII. This last was an enactment of an event that had yet to
occur (with a dishwasher portraying the king!), but Melies was caught off-guard when the actual
event was postponed and his film ended up in theaters two months before the real coronation.
(Melies also was one of the earliest producers of risque films.)
Despite his pioneering efforts, Melies wasn't able to compete against larger companies and he
eventually abandoned films in 1912, returned to the stage and was quickly forgotten. (His brother
Gaston, who had moved to the U.S. to run their North America office, had some success making
Westerns, even working for a while with John Ford's older brother.) Melies was rediscovered at the
end of the twenties, honored with a retrospective and given a rent-free apartment by a film society.
He died in 1937 at the age of 76.

Producer/Director/Screenplay: Georges Melies, based on the novel De la Terre a la Lune by Jules

Verne
Art Direction: Claudel
Cinematography: Michaut Lucien Tainguy
Costume Design: Georges Melies: 
Principal Cast: Bleuette Bernon (Lady in the Moon), Georges Melies (Prof. Barbenfouillis), Victor
Andre, Henri Delannoy, Depierre, Jeanne d'Alcy.
BW-12m.

Viewing Questions: Please respond to these questions in SAQ (short-answer

question) format, 6-9 lines in complete sentences per question asked on a
separate sheet of paper.

1.) Remember that “A Trip to the Moon” would have used piano music played by a
in-house pianist, rather than the score put in by the uploader of the video. If you
were to search YouTube for Melies’ film, “ A Trip to the Moon,” most of the results
will be completely silent, and those that have a soundtrack will have completely
different soundtracks. Thinking about film technology in the early 1900s, why do you
think there is no soundtrack for Melies’ film?

2.) How did Melies convey the story of the Trip to the Moon without the use of
sound effects or verbal dialogue? Explain and give at least two specific examples.

3.) Explain and describe how Melies used props, set pieces, and special effects to tell
his story in an era where green screen and CGI did not exist. Explain and give at
least two specific examples. Keep in mind that many of the background shots are not
real, but are paintings.

4.) Melies’ “A Trip to the Moon” is based on the novel, De La Terre a la Lune by Jules
Verne, a novel many had read around the turn of the century. In Verne’s novel, the
scientists did not actually land on the moon, but rather orbited the moon and
returned home as heroes. Why do you think Melies changed the plot of the film?

5.) How did the missile carrying the scientists get to the moon and return to Earth
from the moon? What does that tell you about the understanding of the Universe in
1902?
Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid
DIRECTIONS: Read the following articles to familiarize yourself
with The Kid. Then, while watching the film and after, answer the
guiding questions found on pages five and six.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK516fV_d4o

Many of Chaplin’s admirers regard The Kid as his most perfect and most personal film.
Yet it seems to have been born out of a state of acute emotional turmoil in his private life.

In October 1918 Chaplin had compromised himself into a hasty marriage with a 17-year-
old actress, Mildred Harris. The couple had little in common, and Chaplin’s personal
boredom and frustration resulted in an acute creative block.

He later wrote : ‘I was at my wits’ end for an idea’. Mildred became pregnant and gave
birth to a malformed boy, who died after only three days. Chaplin evidently suffered
acute trauma from this loss. But the responses of the creative mind are unpredictable.
Only ten days after his own child was buried, Chaplin was auditioning babies at his
studio. Suddenly the creative block seemed overcome. He was absorbed and excited by a
new plan for a story in which the Little Tramp would become surrogate father to an
abandoned child. The film would be called The Waif.

By chance, he visited a music hall where a virtuoso dancer was performing. At the close
of his act, the dancer brought on his four-year-old son - a beautiful, sparkling little boy
called Jackie Coogan. Chaplin had found his co-star. Jackie was a born mimic, and could
perfectly imitate any action or expression Chaplin showed him. This made him the
perfect collaborator. Chaplin was the supreme and sole creator of his films. His
colleagues all agreed that if he could have done so, he would have played every part in
every film himself. Failing this, he looked for actors and actresses who could and would
faithfully and unquestioningly copy precisely what he showed them. In Jackie Coogan he
found his ideal actor.

His inspiration seemed never to slacken during the shooting, which extended over most
of nine months. The only interruption was when Chaplin took a couple of weeks off to
knock out a cheerfully uncomplicated comedy, A Day’s Pleasure, to calm his distributors,
who were desperate at the slow delivery of new pictures. Chaplin never seemed more
dogged in his characteristic quest for perfection than in making The Kid He patiently shot
scenes again and again until he was fully satisfied. In the end he had filmed more than
fifty times the length of film that appeared in the finished picture. Such a shooting ratio -
it was precisely 53 to 1 - was far higher than for any other film he ever made.

The Kid is perhaps Chaplin’s most potent marriage of comedy and high emotion. The
story relates how an unmarried mother abandons a baby, which is found and unwillingly
adopted by the Tramp. As the child matures to five or six years old, the two form a
profitable business partnership: the boy goes round breaking windows, and his friend
follows, earning an honest living by mending them again. The Tramp ferociously opposes
the efforts of social workers to take the boy into public care, and finally he is reunited
with his mother, now a successful opera singer.

The emotional element of the film reaches a peak of poignancy in the scenes where the
social workers try to take the boy away to an orphanage. The anguish and ferocity of the
Tramp’s fight to keep him are unquestionably inspired by memories of Chaplin’s own
childhood heartbreak at being taken from his mother at seven years old and placed in a
home for destitute children.

By the time shooting had ended, Chaplin’s now irretrievably estranged wife Mildred had
begun a suit for divorce. Terrified that her lawyers would try to seize The Kid, Chaplin
and his most faithful associates fled California. The film was edited in secret in a hotel in
Salt Lake City and an anonymous studio in New York. There were further financial
problems with the distributors but when The Kid was finally released in February 1921, it
was an instant triumph everywhere it was shown, perhaps the greatest triumph of
Chaplin’s career.

Jackie Coogan, at 7, became a world celebrity, honoured by princes, presidents and the
Pope himself when he embarked on a European tour. He enjoyed a brief film career as a
child actor, but, as Hollywood wits declared, «senility hit him at 13 years old». As a
young adult he found himself penniless: his mother and step-father had mismanaged his
childhood earnings, and what little money was left was eaten up in legal battles.

The one good outcome was that Jackie’s much publicised problems led to the
introduction of a law to give financial protection to child performers: into this day it is
known as «The Coogan Act». In later life, Jackie, once the most beautiful child in the
world, achieved very different new fame as the nastiest of old men, Uncle Fester in TV
series The Addams Family.

All this though was still hidden in the far-off future in 1921, when The Kid gave Chaplin
the only true co-star of his career, and brought both Chaplin and the child to an
unparalleled peak of world fame and affection.

Viewing Questions: Please respond to these questions in SAQ (short-answer

question) format, 6-9 lines in complete sentences per question asked on a
separate sheet of paper.

1.) How is The Kid a response to Chaplin’s personal childhood and fatherhood?
Explain and give two examples.
2.) “A Trip to the Moon” featured only visual cues and miming to tell the story.
Explain how The Kid uses miming and sight gags to tell the story as well. Also
explain other techniques Chaplin used to tell the story of The Kid different from the
way Melies told “A Trip to the Moon.”

3.) In the first scene, after the mother leaves the hospital, the camera shows a statue
of Jesus carrying a cross up the hill. What is the symbolism and how does Chaplin
use this image to be a storytelling device to describe the mother and her fatherless
child?

4.) Explain how the score of the film helps to set the mood and tell the story in the
absence of dialogue. Give two examples.

5.) Overall, society and the economy of the 1920s was quite prosperous. However,
the era was also the tail-end of the Gilded Age and the era of Progressivism. Explain
how The Kid shows evidence of this era and the message that Chaplin is trying to
convey.

6.) Why do you think Chaplin portrayed the mother of John to be someone of great
prominence and celebrity? What kind of message is he trying to convey? Do you
think this was successful? Why or why not?

7.) In the scene where John’s mother is receiving all the flowers for her
performance, a young African American boy brings her flowers. In today’s society,
this may be seen as racist. Explain why this was not meant to be racist when the film
was made in 1920.

8.) Throughout the film, John and his birthmother cross paths numerous times.
What message do you think Chaplin is trying to convey through this? Do you think
he is successful? Why or why not?

9.) What is the significance to Chaplin’s personal history when he fought against the
doctor and the driver from the Orphan Asylum when they took the boy away?

10.) While the message and content matter of this film is quite serious and dark,
Chaplin uses slapstick humor throughout his film. Explain why you think he did this.

11.) What was the significance of The Tramp’s dream sequence complete with
flowers and the citizens of the area wearing angels’ wings and the attack by the
demons? How does this dream sequence play into the overall theme and message of
the backdrop of the film and Chaplin and John’s lifestyle? Explain the significance of
his death in the dream sequence.

12.) Why did Chaplin portray himself the way he did as his “Little Tramp” character,
complete with oversized shoes, baggy pants, cane, thick eyebrows and moustache?
How did his personal history, as well as the American society of the Gilded Age play
into this?

13.) Write a film review for The Kid. What did Chaplin do well in this film? What did
not work very well at all? How did Chaplin and Jackie Coogan (John, “the kid”)
perform in the film? What was the overall message or theme to the film? Would you
recommend readers see the film? Why or why not? This film review should be ½-1
full page of writing, using evidence from the film.