Silent Beginnings: Metropolis & A Trip to the Moon
Classic Science Fiction Film
Chapter 1 · Silent Beginnings: Metropolis & A Trip to the Moon
Two Real Firsts, 25 Years Apart
Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon (1902) and Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) sit at opposite ends of the silent era, and represent two genuinely different kinds of "first" — one the earliest widely recognized work of science fiction cinema itself, the other the genre's first true feature-length epic.
A Trip to the Moon: A Real, Verifiable Beginning
Written, directed, and produced by Georges Méliès, Le Voyage dans la Lune cost 10,000 francs and took three months to make. At roughly 260 metres of film, it runs about 17 minutes at Méliès's own preferred projection speed. The story follows a group of astronomers launched to the Moon inside a cannon-fired capsule.
Méliès pioneered the "substitution splice" technique for the film's own famous transformations — pausing the camera mid-shot to alter what was in frame, then resuming, creating an illusion of objects and figures changing on screen. The film's approach toward the Moon was achieved with a pulley-operated chair rig rather than moving the camera itself.
The Man in the Moon's Eye
The film's single most iconic image — the capsule landing directly in the eye of a humanized Moon — is also a real, deliberate visual pun: the French phrase dans l'œil ("in the eye") echoes the English idiom "bullseye." More than a century later, it remains one of the most recognizable images in early cinema.
Piracy Before Copyright Caught Up
Lost, Then Found
A rare hand-colored print of the film resurfaced in 1993, having been lost for decades. Its full restoration, completed in 2011 and premiered at Cannes, cost around $1 million and involved reassembling more than 13,000 digitized image fragments.
Metropolis: A Real, Enormous Undertaking
Directed by Fritz Lang and written by Thea von Harbou (adapting her own novel), Metropolis was produced by UFA at the Babelsberg Studio. Principal photography ran from 22 May 1925 to 30 October 1926 — 17 months, across 310 shooting days and 60 nights — on a real budget of 5.3 million Reichsmarks, equivalent to roughly €21 million in 2021 terms. The original German cut ran about 153 minutes.
Set in a dystopian future city sharply divided between a wealthy elite and an exploited working class, the film follows Freder attempting to bridge that divide alongside Maria, a workers' advocate.
A Real Box-Office and Critical Failure That Became a Landmark
The Maschinenmensch
The film's most enduring image is the Maschinenmensch — a robot built in Maria's own likeness by the inventor Rotwang, created using a real plaster cast of actress Brigitte Helm. It remains one of the most recognizable robot designs in film history, decades before most of the shows covered in this Subject's own Television course even existed.
Lost, Then Found: A Real Restoration Story
The original premiere cut was genuinely lost — its camera negatives were deliberately destroyed during a 1927 re-edit for American and British release. Major restorations followed in 1984 (Giorgio Moroder's 83-minute version) and 2001 (a 124-minute restoration premiered at the Berlin Film Festival), before a real, significant discovery in 2008: a 16mm safety negative found in Buenos Aires containing roughly 25 minutes of previously unseen footage. Combined with a New Zealand print discovery, this led to the 2010 "Complete Metropolis," running 148 minutes — the fullest version of the film known to exist.
In 2001, Metropolis became the first film ever inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World International Register.
Two Beginnings, Compared
| A Trip to the Moon (1902) | Metropolis (1927) | |
|---|---|---|
| Real budget | 10,000 francs | 5.3 million Reichsmarks (~€21 million in 2021 terms) |
| Real length | About 17 minutes | About 153 minutes (original cut) |
| Contemporary reception | Genuinely popular, though widely pirated | Mixed — praised visually, criticized narratively |
| Real threat to survival | Rampant, undocumented piracy of its own prints | Deliberate destruction of its own original negative |
| Real restoration story | A hand-colored print found in 1993; restored 2011 | A 16mm negative found in Buenos Aires in 2008; "Complete Metropolis," 2010 |
Questions to Sit With
Méliès lost money to real piracy despite his film's own popularity, while Metropolis's original cut was lost to deliberate destruction. Which of these two real threats to a film's survival do you think is more preventable today, and which still isn't fully solved?
H.G. Wells, himself a real science fiction author, dismissed Metropolis as "quite the silliest film." What do you make of a genre landmark being rejected at the time by one of the very writers whose own work helped define that genre?
Both films are only watchable today in something close to their intended form because of real, decades-later restoration work. How much do you think our whole sense of "classic" early cinema depends on restoration efforts that could easily have never happened?
Quick Reference — Chapter 1
- A Trip to the Moon (1902) — Georges Méliès's real 10,000-franc, three-month production, using the substitution-splice technique
- Its famous "man in the moon" image is a real, deliberate visual pun on the French dans l'œil / English "bullseye"
- Real, documented piracy by Edison and Vitagraph undermined Méliès's own profits despite the film's genuine popularity
- A hand-colored print resurfaced in 1993; a $1 million restoration premiered at Cannes in 2011
- Metropolis (1927) — Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou's real 5.3-million-Reichsmark, 17-month UFA production
- Genuinely mixed at release (including H.G. Wells's real dismissal); its original negative was deliberately destroyed in a 1927 re-edit
- A real 2008 Buenos Aires print discovery led to the 2010 "Complete Metropolis," and a 2001 UNESCO Memory of the World inscription — the first film ever honored
What's Next
Chapter 2: The Atomic Age: 1950s B-Movies & Real Cold War Anxiety.