Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a screening of the cinematic magician George Méliès’ classic “Le Voyage Dans La Lune,” with music supplied by the French band Air, who were in attendance for a Q&A and an after-party following the screening.
For those who aren’t acquainted with Méliès’ alchemical style of early silent cinema, “Le Voyage Dans La Lune” is a 16-minute film that was cinema’s first foray into science fiction, involving Méliès’ full range of special effects wizardy. Méliès, of course, was a famous stage illusionist in France until he saw his first projected film. The magician then built his own camera and began crafting visually-stunning silent films that dazzled audiences across the world.
World War I and the arrival of slapstick filmmakers Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd effectively put the nail in the coffin of Méliès’ art, though it lived on through other directors such as Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. Ask anyone about the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight” music video, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, and they will remember the distinctive look of the film, which is directly lifted, albeit lovingly, from Méliès’ “Le Voyage Dans La Lune.”
The print screened at Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City was found in “desperate condition” in 1993 in Spain. It was a color print (the film was shown in both color and black & white), with each frame hand-painted by Méliès and assistants. Almost immediately, two foundations—Fondation Groupama Gan and Foundation Technicolor—took to preserving the long-lost print by digitizing its elements. It wasn’t until 2010, however, that technology caught up with desire and the film could be fully restored.
Some frames from the black and white print were inserted into the current print and were colored to replicate the existing frames. So, in a sense, it’s not a total representation of Méliès work, but it is impossibly close and therefore a wonder to behold.
Asked about his introduction to Méliès’ work, Air’s Nicolas Godin stated that it seems as though he’d always known about it because of the Méliès’ influence on other filmmakers. ”I think the disciples of Méliès used his influence in a lot of contemporary work, a lot of video makers, filmmakers, people like Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. A lot of advertisements.”
The first time that Jean-Benoit Dunckel saw Méliès, however, was as a child, stating “I felt as though I were on the moon.”
Speaking of his reaction upon being asked to score the film, Godin added, “I was very surprised. I didn’t know there was a color version of the film… We accepted right away because Méliès is such a myth. All our music for the last 15 years has been inspired by the moon, so I saw it as a sign of destiny.”
“In the first case, we chose to imagine the moon. We had this concept of making people fly… and spacing out, but with this one, we didn’t’ really have a choice—the moon was already there… It is all about the poetry behind it,” said Dunckel.
“Méliès did the movie so long ago, and he didn’t know that sound would exist in movies one day. And now his movies can travel through time, and there will be other bands, like us, that will be doing new music for it. His art can be born again. We said to ourselves that we’d make a new birth to the movie because it’s a new thing,” said Dunckel.
Godin added, “This movie was seen as a piece of museum, a piece of history… With the color and the music you can watch it as something entertaining. This is the best homage to George Méliès. With the music, I want the children to look at it and to have emotions—to cry, to be happy, and excited.”
Asked about the distinctive psychedelic look of the moon’s mushrooms in Méliès’ film, Nicolas Godin stated, “Paris in 1902 was like London in 1967,” which elicited quite a lot of laughs. “[Méliès] was a visionary, not only to say that one day we’re going to go to the Moon, but he guessed what would be the ’60s. That’s why the color was so important—it’s like the record cover for Sgt. Pepper, it’s crazy. He had some visions that were crazy.”
Indeed, Air’s music, which is more aggressive than one might expect, fits quite well with Méliès’ film. A full-length album inspired by the film is due out February 7th on Astralwerks, and it will feature vocal contributions from Au Revoire Simone and Beach House’s Victoria Le Grand. For now, watch the music video for the song “Sonic Armada,” with footage from the film’s psychedelic moon mushroom passage.
And here is the tracklisting for the LP “La Voyage Dans La Lune”:
1. Astronomic Club
2. Seven Stars
3. Retour sur terre
4. Parade
5. Moon Fever
6. Sonic Armada
7. Who Am I Know?
8. Décollage
9. Cosmic Trip
10. Homme lune
11. Lava
