One Small Step…

Forty summers ago saw plenty of social turmoil: the musical weekend of Woodstock (check out the 1970 film of that event now on Blu-ray in its expanded 1994 director’s cut!) and the original “Star Trek” TV series finishing its final season. But summer of 1969 was most memorable in the world’s consciousness for man’s first expedition to the moon.

On July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft atop a massive Saturn V rocket launched from Florida, carrying three men into space. Four days later two American astronauts landed on the moon, spent almost a day there while their companion orbited above, lifted off for Earth on July 21 and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean on July 24.

To kids of the period it was an exciting time, promising to make science-fiction into reality. Just the year before, Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking film “2001: A Space Odyssey” depicted space travel as a completely believable routine of the near future.

The moon landing was only eight years after President Kennedy promised America would achieve that goal, so to sci-fi fans the future seemed limitless and imminent. As we know now, things over the next several decades did not develop quite the way most people were expecting. After only six more moon flights over the next three years, humans never again set foot on another celestial surface.

Skylab and space shuttle projects never even came close to the imagination of “2001” or other films and books. Literary visions of moon travel proliferated after the 19th century novels “From the Earth to the Moon” by Jules Verne and “First Men in the Moon” by H. G. Wells, but fictional moon visits actually date back as early as the second century A.D. with Lucian of Samosata’s amusing satire “A True Story.”

Now, 40 years after the first moon landing, it’s a good time to look back on cinematic trips to the moon, perhaps organizing your own private film festival by tracking down appropriate DVDs.

Easy to find online is the very first movie on the subject, French magician and filmmaker George Méliès’ fanciful 13-minute “A Trip to the Moon” (“Le Voyage dans la Lune”) from 1902. It combines elements from both Verne’s and Wells’ stories with Méliès’ own theatrical flair. Most copies available are missing the final triumphant parade scene, but it’s in the DVD from Flicker Alley’s comprehensive five-disc box set of Méliès’ films.

For comparison, Flicker Alley’s three-DVD collection “Saved From the Flames” includes a shorter but nearly shot-by-shot remake for the Pathé studios called “An Excursion to the Moon,” made in 1908 and released with stenciled-on colors.

Two decades later, going to the moon by film switched from pure fantasy to well-researched scientific possibility when famed German director Fritz Lang (“Metropolis,” “M”) made “Woman in the Moon” (“Die Frau im Mond,” 1929). The American release of this ambitious epic deleted much of the plot to focus on the moon shot, but Kino Video’s DVD is the restored German cut that sets the sci-fi spectacle amidst a complex backdrop of international spies and romance.

Jump forward another two decades when two films were involved in their own space race to reach the screen with extensively researched depictions of moon flights, yet still two decades before the actual first moon landings.

“Destination Moon” (August 1950), the Academy Award winner for best special effects, took an approach that tried to be as educational as it was dramatic. In fact, as a drama, it is rather flat, especially today; but as a document showing the reasoning out of the necessities and realities of space travel, it remains fascinating. Many of its predictions turned out to be quite accurate, and it was the primary influence on all later space travel films until “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Star Wars.”

“Rocket Ship X-M” (June 1950) was inspired by all the press coverage given to the making of “Destination Moon.” It was rushed into production, and actually beat the more prestigious film into the theatres. Although made on an even lower budget and in less time, ironically it is a much better film from a dramatic standpoint and actually gets closer on a few scientific details.

Just five years before the Apollo 11 landing came “First Men in the Moon” (1964), a fun updating of H. G. Wells’ classic story with some great animated special effects by Ray Harryhausen. This film gets it both ways, dramatizing the 1890s space flight and fantasy of Wells’ novel as a flashback within the framing story of a modern international moon mission.

Of TV shows available on DVD, “The Outer Limits” episode “Moonstone” from March 1964 and “The Time Tunnel” episode “One Way to the Moon” from September 1966 are both of interest. The latter even incorporates stock footage from “Destination Moon.”

And of course in 1968 came Kubrick’s jaw-dropping leap forward in sci-fi special effects, not to mention thoughtful and enigmatic speculation, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The truly spectacular impact of its 70mm theatrical presentation cannot quite be recaptured at home, but can now be appreciated much better in its Blu-ray edition.

Hammer Films’ space western “Moon Zero Two” (1969) is a definite curiosity but just cannot compare. After the one-two punch of “2001” and the real-life moon landings, sci-fi films would never be the same.