Movie-A-Day #237: A Trip to the Moon (1902).

Starting on this day in 1835, the New York Sun began running a series of articles about the fantastic discoveries made on the moon by a powerful new telescope – discoveries that included blue unicorns, forests, pyramids and even intelligent life in the form of primitive humanoid beavers and a race of bat-men. And thus the Great Moon Hoax was born. Some of these images and ideas were later adopted by French film pioneer Georges Mélies for his groundbreaking “A Trip to the Moon.” Although it clocks in at not much more than 10 minutes, the movie would have a tremendous impact, marking the shift of filmmaking away from mere reportage and toward fiction, fantasy and spectacle. There is a direct line to be drawn from “A Trip to the Moon” to today’s CGI spectaculars.