Going to the moon via movies

Piney and She Who Must Be Obeyed were very much amused by recent references made by Republican candidate Newt Gingrich about starting a colony on the moon, and by Mitt Romney's response that if an employee came to him with such an expensive and foolish idea, he would fire that employee.

These debate exchanges brought Piney memories from 50 years ago when for a couple of years he was in the movie business and interested in the first movie about the moon. His "boss," the president of the company, Francis Borden Mace (still active today at 92), was instrumental in the preservation of all old motion pictures from this very first one by Georges Méliès “A Trip to the Moon” to our more modern attempts at recording history and heartache.

The history of movies made about the moon is long and funny. Wikipedia gives 1902 as the date of this first-ever full-length movie, and it was a French black-and-white silent film. You who have a computer can call it up and view its 35 minutes whenever you wish! That view on the Internet you can be sure is the closest that Mr. Gingrich will ever get to that or any other orbital sphere! To continue this backward view of moviemaking, the French inventor of photography, Niepce, with another Frenchman, Lumiere, developed a factory for making the first still photographs. It was in full operation by 1845. Soon it was a big, if troubled and complicated, business, but eventually an associate, Méliès, thought: If I can make a negative, I can make a positive on film; if I put many shots in order one after the other, I can simulate motion! So, Lumiere, his boss and the original inventor, made a grind-it-yourself camera and the first motion picture was created, one sunny day in Paris -- three minutes of a factory worker woman checking out and going home.

Meanwhile, in Germany, France, England, Italy, the United States, and Russia many copycats strove to perfect the film business. There was a very short film of a horse in 1877, and so forth until 1895 when Méliès started the idea of A Voyage to the Moon and completed it for screening on quarter-view machines in 1902. Later it was screened as we now know movies in theatres. Watch it now to see a group of men in pointed white hats, the "scientists," helped by a bevy of girls, shockingly showing their legs, load the exploration team into the bullet-shaped form and fire it off with a huge cannon.

Hand-colored short movies followed in the ‘20s and in 1929 a color process and sound were added and improved and perfected by the ‘40s. The entry of digital programming in 1964 suddenly completely changed everything and moviemaking became child's play. But making good movies became for the greater part a thing of the past. Any idiot could now get digital equipment and make bad movies.

A very few persons in Italy, France, Russia and the United States stuck to the difficult idea of the excellent story done on film. Borden Mace and his preceptor Louis De Rochemont were the best of the U.S. Eisenstein with The Cruiser Potemkin was best of Russia. Italy had at least three great producers. France had a dozen. Piney's greatest love was the simple De Rochemont film, Miracle on 34^th Street, which you see replayed each Christmas holiday season. Last night Piney and She discovered by chance a film called Lies My Father Told Me, made in Canada in 1976. It was superb! So there are gems among the dross of everyday American film making!

A writer, Bill Cobbs divides his time between Florida and Southwest Virginia.