A Trip to the Moon
1902 French black-and-white silent science fiction film directed by Georges Méliès
A Trip to the Moon (French: Le Voyage dans la Lune [lə vwajaʒ dɑ̃ la lyn], transl. "The Journey into the Moon") is a 1902 French science-fiction adventure trick film written, directed and produced by Georges Méliès. Inspired by the Jules Verne novel From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and its sequel Around the Moon (1870), the film follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon in a cannon-propelled capsule, explore the Moon's surface, escape from an underground group of Selenites (lunar inhabitants), and return to Earth with a captive Selenite. Méliès leads an ensemble cast of French theatrical performers as the main character Professor Barbenfouillis.
Although the film disappeared into obscurity after Méliès's retirement from the film industry, it was rediscovered around 1930, when Méliès's importance to the history of cinema was beginning to be recognised by film devotees. An original hand-coloured print was discovered in 1993, and restored in 2011.
A Trip to the Moon was ranked 84th among the 100 greatest films of the 20th century by The Village Voice. The film remains Méliès' best-known, and the moment when the capsule lands (in the moon's eye) remains one of the most iconic, and frequently referenced, images in the history of cinema.
Plot
At a meeting of the Astronomy Club, its president, Professor Barbenfouillis, proposes an expedition to the Moon. After addressing some dissent, five other brave astronomers—Nostradamus, Alcofrisbas, Omega, Micromegas, and Parafaragaramus—agree to the plan. A space capsule in the shape of a bullet is built, along with a huge cannon to shoot it into space.
“A Trip to the Moon” enters the record as 1902 French black-and-white silent science fiction film directed by Georges Méliès. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Trip, Moon and French can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“A Trip to the Moon” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Trip, Moon and French provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q244971. VIAF identifies the subject as 183034850. The Library of Congress control number is n2010042645. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 2 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1902, 1865, 1870 and 1930.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Trip to the Moon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.