Melies on A Trip to the Moon
" The idea of A Trip to the Moon was given to me by Jules Verne's book From the Earth to the Moon. In this the men cannot reach the moon, go around it, and come back to earth, after having, in fact, failed in their expedition. So I imagined, using Jules Verne's procedure (cannon blasted projectile), reaching the moon, so as to be able to compose a certain number of original and amusing views of the interior and exterior of the moon, and to show some monsters, inhabitants of the moon, while adding one or two artistic effects."
" When I made A Trip to the Moon, there were still no 'stars' among the artists, their names were never known or printed on the posters or announcements. The film was called 'Star Film' and the name of Melies himself did not appear on the screen, although I played the principal roles. The people employed were all acrobats, girls and singers from the music hall, theatre actors not yet having accepted to play roles in films because they considered films as much below the theatre. They only came later, when they learned that the music hall people earned more money playing in films than they did working in the theatre, for some 300 francs a month. In the cinema they could earn double. Two years after this, my office was every evening full of theatre people wanting jobs."
" I remember that in A Trip to the Moon the moon (the lady in the crescent) was Bleinette Bernon, a music hall singer, the stars were ballet girls from the Chatelet, Victor Andre, from the Theatre de Cluny, Delpierre, Farjaux, Kelm, Brunnet, music hall singers and myself. The Selenites were acrobats from the Folies-Bergere."
" The film cost around 10,000F, a relatively large sum for the time, due principally to the mechanical machinery and mainly to the cost of costumes of cardboard and cloth made for the Selenites or inhabitants of the moon. Their shells, heads, feet, everything was made specially, and in consequence expensive. I myself made the models done in clay, and the plaster moulding and the costumes were made by a maker of special masks, used to working in papier mache."
(to hear a clip of Melies speaking - it's in french, so I'm guessing it's from his 1938 radio interview; a translation would be welcome - click here)