|
|
 2012 Flicker Alley Blu-ray Disc/DVD edition
A Trip to the Moon (1902), color-tinted black & white, 15 minutes, not rated, Pillarboxed 16:9 MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, one single-sided Blu-ray Disc, Region A, ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? kbps audio bit rate, DTS 5.1 surround sound and Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound, French and English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, chapter stops; and Full-frame 4:3 NTSC, one single-sided, single-layered DVD-R disc, Region 1, ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? kbps audio bit rate, DTS 2.0 stereo sound and Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound, French and English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, 5 chapter stops, BD SteelBook, $39.95. Blu-ray Disc/DVD release date: 10 April 2012. Country of origin: USA |
|||||
This Blu-ray/DVD edition has been mastered from a conflated digital restoration of a hand-colored 35mm nitrate print, with severely-damaged and missing frames transferred from a black & white 35mm print of higher quality and digitally tinted for color continuity. It had been thought that no original hand-colored copies of A Trip to the Moon had survived until a sole nitrate print was recovered in Spain in the mid-1990s. The surviving color print was thought to be too fragile to transfer or photochemically copy for restoration, but in 2010 Lobster Films, Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema and the Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage utilized new digital technologies to transfer, reassemble and restore the 13,375 frames that comprise the restoration version of the film. The film is accompanied by an original music score composed and performed by Air (Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel).
Also presented is a black and white version of the film transferred from a fine-grain duplicate copied from a 35mm nitrate print held by the Méliès family. This version of the film is presented with three optional music scores: an orchestral score composed and conducted by Robert Israel (with spoken narration in English, from the French narrative written by Méliès), a piano score performed by Frederick Hodges, and the Hodges score with spoken dialogue performed by actors as presented in the USA in 1903. Packaged in a limited-edition, SteelBook case, this home video edtion is supplemented with presentations of an early Méliès film, The Astronomer’s Dream (1898), and a late Méliès film, The Eclipse (1907) [misidentified on the packaging as 1904], both with astronomic themes; a video interview with composers/musicians, Air (12 minutes); and the documentary The Extraordinary Voyage (2011), directed by Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange. The documentary includes interviews with contemporary French filmmakers Costa Gavras, Michel Gondry, Michel Hazanavicius and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and comments by other filmmakers Terry Gilliam and Tom Hanks. While not all of the films presented in the set have been remastered in high-definition, we recommend this new home video edition of A Trip to the Moon.
|
||||||
| Other GEORGES MÉLIÈS films available on home video.
Other FRENCH FILMS of the silent era available on home video. |
| Silent Era Home Page > Home Video > A Trip to the Moon || Top of Page |
