Sci-Fi Films pre-1920

Le Voyage dans la Lune

1902 Star Film, Paris

OK fantasy flight to Moon

short, with stage props

Méliès always portrays learned men in robes and pointy caps, with very long hair and beards — the classic wizard outfit.

Transportation is by means of a projectile bullet fired from a cannon, à la Jules Verne’s de la Terre à la Lune. (Note: Verne died in 1905, so it is not impossible that he saw the film.) The scientists pack in, assisted by dancing girls.

Dancing girls figure heavily in all Earth activities.

The famous scene is the one where the bullet hits the man-in-the-Moon in his pie-face. But all stars and planets are anthropomorphized.

In a cave, the scientists find the world of the Moon-men, who are monkey-like in movement, but have weapons. Fortunately, they explode upon being hit with umbrellas.

To return, the scientists push the bullet off the edge of the Moon (or off the limb of its crescent?) They land in the ocean and are towed to safety.

See also The Astronomer’s Dream, 20.000 Lieues sous les mers (1907)

Le Voyage à travers l’impossible

1906 Star Film, Paris

+ comedy space/sea voyage

short, with stage props

The story begins with socialites and engineers planning something big. Their plan is to fly into the sky… for what reason? as tourists?

Most scenes are crammed with actors (I counted about 25 in one) all engaged in furious, comedic, often violent, activity. You can’t possibly take these in at a single viewing — and maybe that was the intention.

It is all in Méliès’ lovely stage-play style, featuring painted cut-out props and one physical gag after another.

Eventually, the tourists pile into a locomotive with airships tied above. (There is also a submersible involved.)

Multiple train-crashes occur, with a consequent hospital scene.

The train goes off the end of a track, and keeps going up, evidently heading for the Sun — which in Méliès’ usual style, is depicted as a man’s face, expressing extravagantly. The train proceeds into the mouth of the face, and crashes onto a … rocky? (or fiery?) location. Fortunately, they have an ice car to cool off in (which provides more comedic scenes).

They then board the submersible, and parachute off the Sun, into the sea, where they have more adventures.

It’s not strictly sci-fi, but it is visually engaging.

Voyage autour d’une étoile

1906 Pathé frères

− fantasy space voyage

short, with stage props

There is nothing remotely naturalistic here. The old scientist sees in his telescope people popping out of windows on planets and stars, decides to go there, gets some soap and floats up in a bubble, somehow gets confused for the king of a star, gets kicked out, floats back on his umbrella, only to be impaled upon a building’s weather vane.

The Moon is just a crescent with a pretty girl laying within it, and the planet Saturn opens up a window to show the old god (presumably) arguing with the scientist. Stars are five-pointed star shapes, with windows for pretty girls to look out from.

Is it science fiction? Probably not, except for the idea of space flight.

Deux cents milles sous les mers

1907 Star Film Company

− fantasy undersea voyage

short, with stage props

This is apparently a parody of the Verne novel, in which a guy dreams that he is the hero of the novel.

As in his other films, Méliès draws most of his technique from theatrical scenery, with film tricks added in, and troupes of dancing girls for spice. Some scenes use animation, some use a combination of animation and shots through a fish tank.

It’s at most a surreal vision of the natural world.

Le voleur invisible
(Scène fantasmagorique)
[The Invisible Thief]

1909 Pathé Frères

OK chemistry fantasy

short, stop-action

The guy buys a copy of “G. H. Wells” L’Homme Invisible (for 1 ₣), wherein it appears:

which ingredients, he happens to have on-hand in his little apartment.

With fairly convincing special effects, it makes his body (not clothes) invisible.

Stop-action photography depicts his thieving spree.

This pre-dates the first full-length adaptation of the novel by 24 years.

Der Luftkrieg der Zukunft
aka. The Airship Destroyer
aka. The Aerial Torpedo
aka. The Battle in the Clouds

1909

− prescient of air warfare

short

The countryside is beset by dirigible airships, from which soldiers drop little bombs (after lighting fuses on them) on country-houses and armored vehicles, and set a city on fire. Very early heavier-than-air manned aircraft also appear, and an unmanned anti-airship drone.

(For context, dirigible airships were being developed since the 1850s, but Zeppelin’s superior designs were still on the drawing board. The Wright brothers’ first heavier-than-air flight had happened only four years previously.)

There are some interesting perspective shots: the dirigibles are small models, but in some scenes, a nearer craft flies between them and the audience.

I read that it was first released in Austria-Hungary under the German title.

It foresaw the German bombing of Britain by zeppelins in 1914–1918.

Booth followed this film with Aerial Submarine in 1910 and with The Aerial Anarchists in 1911, which has been lost.

The copy I saw ended with a card “Pause”. I wonder if there was more…

A Trip to Mars

1910 Edison Manufacturing Company

−− fantasy space voyage

clip

This five-minute film is a simple fantasy, of interest primarily because of its early date and its creator.

The mode of travel is “reverse gravity” powder accidentally spilt on the professor’s suit. He just floats up and lands on Mars.

Martians are giant anthropomorphic trees.

Frankenstein

1910 Edison Manufacturing Company

− early horror demonstration film

short, with film reversal effects

Two main special effects: One is the creation of the monster, accomplished by playing the burning of the monster in reverse. (You can see the smoke going backward.)

The other is the monster popping into a mirror.

This is not the first attempt to put Frankenstein on film, but it’s the first that is still viewable. The best adaptation of the story is the 1931 film.

A reconstructed version is in the public domain, downloadable at
Frankenstein | Library of Congress

Un matrimonio interplanetario

1910 Latinum-Film

OK comedy space travel

short

Strangely, all the English-language copies are titled “Marriage in the Moon”, although the Moon has nothing to do with it.

The film opens with the very excitable astronomer in his observatory expounding upon his telescope. His dress is 18th-century.

As he peers through the telescope, extended cartoon space scenes show some familiar-looking bodies: probably Jupiter, and eventually, Mars. These are followed by extended cartoon scenes of Martian landscape: plants, and an exotic town.

Then he peeps into a window (of a building on Mars), where “Fur, astronomer of Mars” is working in his own observatory, with his very — robust — daughter.

Letters flying through space depict a “wireless between Earth and Mars”. The daughter happens to have a wireless telegram receiver: the earthling astronomer has proposed marriage to her.

Martians wear funny headgear.

Dancing ladies attend the Martian wedding party.

The Earthmen make a “projectile”, a relatively elaborate prop shows the loading of a cannon with a steel ball. The ball contains the groom and his best man (and official).

Martian private transportation: a bean-shaped carriage, exceedingly clumsy to board, runs on roller-coaster rails until it reaches a ramp, and launches into the air.

It’s unclear to me why both parties had to be airborne, and crash-land onto the surface, but they brush it off, and the couple goes through the marriage procedures, in which the groom bestows nuptial gifts.

Now… what? They’re in a cave? With lobster-men? — nothing comes of them. And the dancing girls ladies again… end.

Museo Nazionale del Cinema Torino has published an English-language copy. I have been unable to find an on-line copy in Italian.

Careful: in some copies, someone has tried to remove the intertitles. They flash, for only a couple of frames.

Aerial Submarine
A Startling Forecast
Piracy in Sea and in Air

1910 Kineto

− pirates in a flying sub

short

Even more shocking: the pirate captain is a woman!

Depicts the sinking of a cruiser by torpedo (which had happened by 1911), and a flying submarine (which had not).

The submarine design is pretty cool, not so different from those envisaged in later decades.

This is the second in Booth’s series involving air warfare.

The Aerial Anarchists

1911 Kineto

? lost film. No footage known to survive.

full-length

The film is said to have depicted airships bombing London, only a few years before the first time that actually happened, in 1915.

The third in Booth’s series showing the possibility of air warfare.

Filibus
Il misterioso pirata del cielo

1915 Corona Film

+ detective vs. airborne villain

full-length, in five parts

It’s a detective vs supervillain story, all baronesses and damsels and masked thugs and henchmen and dastardly deeds.

The main science-fiction element is the villain’s personal airship, from which they drop down in a bucket to enact all manner of fiendish designs.

Besides the airship, there is personality theft by means of a stolen handprint, a heliograph for communication, a sedative dispensed from a dropper that somehow works at a distance (used several times), and a miniature spy-camera.

The most fun comes from the twist that the villain is a young woman. It plain from the start that the Countess is in fact the fiendish schemer. She cross-dresses, puts on a moustache, and infiltrates her victims’ houses and hearts.

The title is said to be a combination of the Greek word ‘filos‘, for “love”, and the ending of the Latin word ‘omnibus‘ “of all”.

Nobody ever seems to notice that an airship is flying overhead. The film makes this strange disjunct visually plausible by having the airship always in clouds — even when, in scenes on the ground below, the sky seems to be clear. Maybe the filmmakers meant it to be surreal, or maybe they were hoping viewers had so little experience with airships, they wouldn’t notice the problem.

Verdens Undergang
The End of the World

1916 Fotorama

OK world catastrophe

full-length

A lengthy introduction sets up the personal relationships.

Then a comet is discovered, and it is calculated to be on a collision course with Earth. A shifty businessman gets the idea to profit on the information with the stock market, misinforming the public with the press, and only making matters worse.

As the comet grows ever larger in the sky, the bad guy contrives to survive in his mines, and throws a big party for his rich friends. A revolt by the poor results in further tragedy.

Scenes of fireballs falling on houses, lightning, houses afire, smoke and wind, panicked crowds. The oceans rise, flooding ensues.

This is proper science fiction, because the notion of a heavenly body colliding with the Earth came only with relatively recent scientific understanding. There was no historical account of such a thing — and meteors had not, previous to science, been connected with comets.

The cinematography and acting is good. For most of the film, the pace is awfully slow (but maybe audiences of the time didn’t expect a quick show).

Parables:
Astronomers can’t be trusted to give us the facts.
Rich guys are sneaky rascals.
The poor are about to revolt!
After the scorched earth: a Man and a Woman!

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

1916 Universal Film Mfg. Co.

OK undersea adaptation

full-length

Vehicle: the Nautilus, whose exterior pretty convincing as a submarine.

The story is a combination of Verne’s Vingt mille lieues sous les mers with his L’Île mystérieuse. The two novels share some characters and elements, but dont’t really belong to a single narrative, and combining them required substantial license.

Both Nemo and his daughter (the wild girl) have dark skin. (In L’Île mystérieuse, Nemo explains that he was an Indian prince.)

This was a very expensive film to make, due largely to the undersea shots and the Nautilus itself. For that reason, the story is, it was some years before Hollywood again tried such an ambitious project.

homunculus
(A dramatic poem)

1916

OK unnatural birth morality play

6-part film

This is a German production, of the war years. I read it was very popular at the time, and for some years after. An Italian-language re-release of 1920 has been preserved and restored.

The film is called a serial, but the structure of the episodes is unlike serials of the 1930s. It is more of a six-hour movie, in six one-hour chapters.

The science-fiction aspect is that of an artificial human. In this story, scientific methods produce a baby, which develops into a loveless man.

The main special effect is a flashy glass case, containing a glass globe. Evidently, the baby comes out of this contraption… it’s not clear how.

One peculiarity of the story is that the scientist who created Homunculus isn’t the evil one — his competitor switches a dead baby for Homunculus. It’s not clear what the bigger sin is, to create a baby artificially, or, to replace a dead baby with the artificial one.

The premise is that if a baby isn’t born normally, it will be unable to love. And that if one is unable to love, one will become a monster.

Much of the first episodes show him having altogether too much soul. He’s tormented, sure, but in no way that normal mortals aren’t.

The filmmakers employed an odd effect with the eyes of enraged people: the whites become very large, like the eyes are popping out. It might be make-up, but it almost looks as if it was applied later.

I’m not sure how much of the film still exists. I only found somewhat over an hour on YouTube, but in a few postings that are not identical. They are all “From the George Eastman House”.

Himmelskibet
(Sky boat)
a.k.a. A Trip to Mars
Photo-Play in six parts

1918

OK heroic, spiritually uplifting space travel

full-length

Vehicle: sky ship Excelsior. Depicted are: a full-sized model shown outdoors, what seem to be transparencies to show it in flight, and scenes showing its outside in flight as the crew put their heads out the window. It’s on the order of 15 meters long. It looks something like a small dirigible with biplane wings atop the front, smaller biplane wings aft, a vertical tail, an airscrew in the rear, and wheels underneath.

Inside, it has a control room, a sleeping room with bunks (which may also be the dining room), an engine room with little moving mechanical doo-dads, and a side hall connecting them, where the windows are. Its crew is seven men, in tiny accommodations. (On the return trip, there’s a passenger!)

The young pilot, with his tendency for wild gesticulation, probably wouldn’t be able to get a modern pilot’s license.

A card reads “outside Earth’s atmosphere”. Some clouds appear, and then a second later another card reads “six months later”, and the ship is enveloped in blackness. The next card introduces a space scene with “the endless blackness of space”. It apparently makes the crew depressed. They think they are getting nowhere.

The American is an alcoholic, and that becomes a problem. The crew starts to freak out when the captain pulls their booze away. The combination of sobriety and the blackness makes them plan mutiny.

The Martians are just people wearing white robes bearing… the sign for Venus? Their wise men wear little lace hats. They dance and spiritualize a lot.

Martians see the sky ship and decide to bring the space “bird” in. God be praised! The mutinous crew evidently repent.

They put on oxygen masks, which turn out to be unnecessary.

Most of the rest of the film concerns the Martians’ peaceful, vegetarian way of life, in contrast to the Earthlings’ lusty manfulness. The Martians turn out to be just as prone to overacting as the Earthlings, however. And of course, our hero falls in love with a Martian princess.

Then they hop back into the sky ship and return home gloriously!

Do I understand correctly that the bad professor was causing a storm to interfere with their landing, but the Martian princess somehow reversed it and electrocuted him?

The Danish Film Institute restored and re-released the film in 2006.

Altogether, there isn’t a whole lot of science here, but it does portray interplanetary travel as a technical possibility, and it at least mentions the orbits of the planets and quotes a reasonable amount of time to traverse the distance.

The First Men in the Moon

1919

? lost film. Only stills are known to remain.

full-length