- Courtesy: Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage
Before Apollo moonwalkers did it for real, movie audiences went to the Moon in 1902.
Thanks to the movie magic of Georges Méliès’, his A Trip to the Moon – original title, Le voyage dans la lune — became a masterpiece – whisking moviegoer’s onto the lunar surface.
Back then, there was no need for a giant Saturn V booster.
Getting the men to the Moon required being shot in a capsule via a giant cannon. But once on location, the men are captured by inhabitants on the Moon, but escape and return back to Earth.
The 14-minute silent film was first released in black and white – and also in hand-painted color. But the color version was considered lost. A color print was found in 1993 in Barcelona, Spain.
Still, the nitrate print had been severely damaged over time and was in such poor condition that refurbishment of the film, at first, seemed pointless.
In 2010, a restoration project was launched by Lobster Films, Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema and the Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage.
The result: Thanks to the advanced digital technologies available today, the fragments of the 13,375 frames were reassembled and restored one by one.
The digital restoration of A Trip to the Moon took place at Technicolor’s laboratories in Los Angeles, California.
Billed as the most complex and ambitious restoration project in the history of cinema, the restored epic now includes a soundtrack, composed by the French band, Air.
By Leonard David