One strange trip

Movies are famous for their dramatic moments. Some scenes are more famous than others, and a particular image from that scene can reach iconic status.

Think of the image of King Kong atop the Empire State Building, holding onto Fay Wray with one paw while swatting at attacking airplanes with the other. Or the freeze-frame ending of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” that has the two outlaws bursting from a building with guns blazing in the face of the surrounding Bolivian Army.

George Méliès

Back at the beginning of the motion picture industry, a film featured a scene that would also become iconic and is still amusing today. Travel back to 1902, the year before the Wright brothers got their Flyer off the ground for the first time. One filmmaker was already depicting a voyage into space.

That was “A Trip to the Moon” by Georges Méliès. The 13-minute silent film was actually titled “Le Voyage dans la Lune” since Méliès was French.

During the film, a group of astronomers are launched to the Moon in a capsule shot from a cannon. As the bullet-shaped capsule sails through space, the Moon becomes more distinct until the face of the Man in the Moon appears clearly.

The iconic image from “Le Voyage dans la Lune” by George Méliès

Then the film cuts to a shot of the back end of the astronomer’s space capsule protruding from Man in the Moon’s right eye as what looks like blood flows down the face.

It’s a funny – but disturbing – picture. And it’s certainly one of the most iconic images of film history.

There’s actually very little real science in “A Trip to the Moon.” The movie mostly features a group of arguing astronomers traveling to the Moon, being captured by Moon creatures called Selenites and escaping back to Earth. For some reason the launch crew of the space capsule consists of a group of pretty young women wearing shorts.

Méliès obviously drew on the novels of Jules Verne for some inspiration for his story, and it can easily be considered a forefather of the many science fiction films to come over the years since 1902.

I watched the short film as it was broadcast on Turner Classic Movies as part of its Silent Sunday Nights series of movies. I had seen it before and was always amused by the image of the Man in the Moon shot in the eye. But this viewing I was struck by a different scene from the film.

After the six "astronomers" clamber out of the space capsule on the Moon, they survey the moonscape, which looks suitably craggy and alien. But then in the distance, rising above the horizon is a full view of the Earth. They watch as the Earth emerges from behind the distant mountains and ascends into the sky.

Earthrise, taken on Dec. 24, 1968, by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders

I couldn’t help but think of Apollo 8 in that moment. There was “Earthrise,” the iconic photo taken by U.S. astronaut Bill Anders from aboard the Apollo space capsule in 1968.

Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft that circumnavigated the Moon and included Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman as astronauts. Anders shot the famous image on Dec. 24 from lunar orbit, and it shows a shining hemisphere of Earth rising above the gray moonscape.

Anders, Lovell and Borman were orbiting the Moon when they captured that image for posterity. It should change how people see our home world and how truly beautiful and special it is in the vastness of space.

Méliès may have created a silly science fiction short back in 1902, but the bullet in the Man in the Moon’s eye shouldn’t be the iconic image from that film.

He was imagining Earthrise more than 60 years before we saw it for real.