There's a shot in Yellow Sky (1948) that immediately distinguishes itself from all others in the film, when we see the male lead (an outlaw named Stretch, played by Gregory Peck) through the barrel of a rifle being aimed by a woman (Mike, played by Anne Baxter) who hasn't yet made up her mind about pulling the trigger. The shot's thick rifle barrel border fills all but the very center of the screen with darkness, a strong contrast to the brightly lit exterior shots of sun-baked desert which dominate the rest of the film. But the most striking thing about this shot is that, for all purposes, it proclaims itself as a point-of-view shot when in fact it is not. The framing of Stretch at the end of a long tube implies an owned specularity, like a shot of the moon as seen through a telescope. We are tricked for a moment into believing that the owner of this view is the shooter, when in fact it belongs to an unseen and unseeing object: the bullet.
The peril of such a trick is that it threatens to expose the camera as the autonomous presenter of the film. While not every shot in a feature film is a point-of-view shot (most are not), when a shot is first disguised as a point-of-view shot, then revealed to be otherwise, there is a noticeable disruption, a perceptual double-take, that hints at the film's construction. This of course works to varying degrees, depending upon the shot and the audience, and by pointing this out I am not suggesting that all shots should conceal the camera's presence as much as possible or that stylized camera work should never be used (if it never were, there would be no Expressionism or film noir, to say the least). Depending upon the type of shot and its context, though, the artifice of such shots can become more noticeable than for others, for better or worse.
Great Expectations: Pip comes to
Another such deception is the simulated "coming to" shot, which shows a blurry figure coming into focus as a character regains consciousness. A perfect example of this can be seen in the David Lean-directed Great Expectations (1946). After visiting Abel Magwitch's death bed, Pip staggers home through London streets and passes out on his bed. The next shot begins in hazy darkness, then slowly brightens and focuses on the shape of Joe Gargery. This appears in every way to be the point-of-view of the recovering Pip, a trick set up by the previous shot, which showed Pip's authentic point-of-view as he pushed through his door and fell into bed. Once Joe is in complete focus, however, we see that he is not looking into Pip's eyes — that is, directly into the camera lens — but rather offscreen. The shot is thus revealed not as Pip's actual point-of-view, but as an ornate fade.
First Men in the Moon: Images captured by a nonexistent camera
I mentioned another example in an earlier post, from the 1964 film First Men in the Moon. At the end there is a scene in which people on Earth watch a television broadcast from the moon, which shows a trio of astronauts escaping from a collapsing underground lunar city. The television broadcast shows three shots from three different camera angles, though no character is present on the moon to operate a camera, let alone three.
Of the three listed here, the rifle barrel shot is probably the most disruptive, due to its obvious gimmickry. I don't know how this shot was achieved, but it screams "special effect." The effect of the simulated "coming to" shot is perhaps a wash if one considers the alternative — it may have been more jarring if Bernard Miles (the actor playing Joe) had looked directly into the lens. (Lean could have presented the awakening with the camera trained on Pip, however, or in a medium two-shot, e.g., to keep the camera more concealed; obviously he and cinematographer Guy Green found value in the simulated POV.) However, like the lunar TV broadcast, this method of suggesting character point-of-view has become common enough that perhaps it is not as noticeable to all viewers.
41 years ago today, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin made history by landing humans on the moon for the first time. In commemoration, I present this survey of four films which imagine such an event from the perspective of their own times. All were made prior to the 1969 landing, and each presents a unique vision of space travel.
A Trip to the Moon (1902)
A Trip to the Moon is a short film made by French magician Georges Méliès, who pioneered the use of fades, dissolves, and simple visual effects in his approximately 500 films, many of which concerned fantastical subjects. A Trip to the Moon is such a film, and depicts a whimsical voyage made by turn-of-the-century astronomers inside a bullet-shaped space capsule which is shot out of a very long gun barrel into the eye of the literally depicted "man in the moon." Upon landing, the crew of astronomers encounters such oddities as a forest of giant mushrooms and primitive lunar natives before being captured and brought before the natives' leader. The travellers manage to escape after a climactic chase and succeed in tipping their capsule off the edge of a cliff so that it falls clear off the moon and back to Earth.
It would be unfair to compare A Trip to the Moon to real space travel as its intent is purely to entertain. (Even so, the method of return travel is an over-simplified version of that described in 1950's Destination Moon, which explains that once a rocket escapes the gravitational field of the moon, it is simply "falling" through space until it is caught by the gravitational field of Earth.) Along with its entertainment merit, though, is much historical value. Méliès is credited with steering film away from use as mere spectacle and toward the presentation of narrative. The earliest films were exhibitions of the technology itself — Edison's kissing couple, or the Lumières' unlucky gardener being sprayed by a hose. Méliès' work was the start of cinematic storytelling, which would explode into popular film in the following years of the twentieth century.1
Woman in the Moon (1929)
Woman in the Moon is a silent movie directed by Fritz Lang which depicts the first trip to the moon as being motivated not only by the spirit of scientific discovery and adventure, but by the quest for gold. The trip is the brainchild of Professor Manfeldt, an astronomer who posits the moon as a source of vast gold deposits. While he is initially derided and his claims dismissed, his plan is given new life years later by Wolf Helius, and aeronautics entrepreneur who is able to secure funding for the journey on one condition: that the organization known as the Finance Group be given control over all gold discovered on the moon. This provision is to be enforced by their representative Walter Turner, who, much to the dismay of the gold-crazy Manfeldt, is to accompany the crew (think a creepy version of Bud Cort's "bond company stooge" from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, played by a 1920's German equivalent to Crispin Glover). Further complicating matters is that Helius is in love with another crew member, a woman named Friede, who is engaged to Helius' chief engineer, Hans Windegger. Manfeldt, Helius, Turner, Friede, and Windegger set off for the moon unaware that a young boy named Gustav has also stowed away on their rocket. From the start, this film is set up more for soap opera melodrama than scientific realism.
Still, the film addresses certain logistical elements of the voyage in some detail. The investors from the Finance Group review rocket diagrams, photographs from Helius' test launch, and a short film explaining rocket trajectory. There is a depiction of g-forces during the very high-speed launch, and weightlessness is demonstrated as Gustav floats through the cabin and Windegger coaxes wine from a bottle. The ship is equipped with airlocks, and Windegger angrily and sarcastically emphasizes their importance to Helius. Space suits are on-board and ready for use until Manfeldt discovers the moon has a breathable atmosphere.
Yet despite the excitement and novelty of space travel, this film focuses on the tension between the crew, which culminates in a gunfight which ruptures an oxygen tank, releasing oxygen needed for the return trip and therefore dooming one crew member to a solitary life on the moon so the others can return to earth. This drama could have been played out in any context, though it is a treat to see space travel presented by Lang, especially with some nice aerial photography and miniature sets during the construction and launch of the rocket.
Destination Moon (1950)
Destination Moon has been touted as one of the first science fiction movies to focus on the reality of space travel, not merely the fantasy inspired by it. Indeed, it contains much discussion and debate about the role of government vs. that of private industry in America's first trip to the moon (with responsibility for building the necessary rocket being placed on the private sector), about how to deal with unfavorable public opinion, and about the threat of sabotage. The primary motivation for landing on the moon is military supremacy — the first nation able to fire weapons from the moon will dominate the world. We can assume that the Soviet Union is America's primary competition in the film, though as in several other science fiction films of the time, this is never stated explicitly.
There is ample technical exposition, including a lesson in rocketry presented to a roomful of American industrialists by a Woody Woodpecker cartoon. This technique is borrowed decades later when an animated DNA strand explains the process of cloning to theme park visitors in Jurassic Park, and it is perhaps intended to communicate the more technical aspects of the plot to a younger audience more interested in fantasy adventure. It could also be taken as a joke about the inability of business people to understand scientific ideas. (An extra stereotype is provided in the form of a Texas entrepreneur who questions, in a Southern drawl, why he should cooperate in the venture at all, finally acquiescing with a joke about Texas being the only state large enough to contain the project.) Funding is secured, and construction soon begins on a tall, gleaming "classic" 1950's rocket ship.
The film depicts other realities of space travel in its own way, including g-forces (the crew are nearly crushed during the face-altering lift off), zero gravity (magnet boots solve this problem), the consequences of toying with Newton's First Law and a daring rescue exploiting his Third: when one of the crew makes the mistake of letting go of his tether during a spacewalk, another improvises a jet pack out of an oxygen tank in order to retrieve the drifting crew member. (A similar rescue attempt is shown years later in 2000's Mission to Mars, which depicts the first attempt to land humans on the Red Planet.)
Most striking is how Destination Moon presages actual difficulties faced by NASA's Apollo missions, still over a decade away from the film's release. As the rocket comes in for its landing, the pilot needs to adjust course and in doing so uses more than the allotted amount of fuel. Similarly, as Apollo 11's lunar module descended to the moon's surface, Neil Armstrong noticed that the pre-set course was leading the lander into a crater filled with boulders. Taking the controls, Armstrong guided the craft to a more suitable location, though he did so with the knowledge that each second of flight was using fuel. Had he used too much, the landing would have been aborted in order to conserve fuel for the return trip. Armstrong successfully landed the module — with only 20 seconds of fuel to spare.2
The crew in Destination Moon isn't as fortunate, however, for their delay in landing consumes so much fuel that they have too little to return to Earth. Their ground control devises a plan that requires the astronauts to lighten the ship by three thousand pounds. Communicating regularly with Earth, the astronauts are able to make the necessary modifications and return home safely. This is an eerie forerunner to NASA's ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, which suffered its own disastrous mishaps and which required the resources of the crew and the NASA command center to be salvaged.3
Not all parallels between the film and the real moon landing are as foreboding. When the first two astronauts in the movie set foot on the moon, one declares, "For the grace of God, and the name of the United States of America, I take possession of this planet on behalf of and for the benefit of all mankind." The plaque left on the moon by the Apollo 11 crew reads, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind." The plaque bears the names of the three astronauts as well as the name of "Richard Nixon, President, United States of America."4 Also, after the astronauts in the film claim the moon, they receive a radio call from a reporter on Earth. Similarly, after Armstrong and Aldrin erected the US flag on the surface of the moon, they received a call from President Nixon, who expressed his pride in the mission.5
True to its reputation, in Destination Moon each of the hardships experienced by the astronauts provides means to explore a technical challenge in a "realistic" way. In Woman in the Moon, the stranding, for example, is merely a set-up for dramatic conflict and the resolution of the Helius-Friede-Windegger love triangle. In Destination Moon, it is the catalyst for technical innovation and the demonstration of how potential problems might be handled on a real space mission.
First Men in the Moon (1964)
First Men in the Moon is based on a story by H.G. Wells, with visual effects by revered stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen. The film opens with dramatic titles and a fairly realistic depiction of a present-day (1960's era) moon landing, as a landing craft separates from an orbiting command module and begins what is believed to be the first-ever descent to the lunar surface. Interestingly for a film made in the midst of the space race, the crew is an international assembly sent not by the USA, but by the UN. The astronauts are soon shocked to discover that a British flag and a claim dated 1899 have been left on the moon by an unknown visitor. Authorities on earth soon find the only survivor of that original mission, who tells his story in a flashback to Victorian England where the tone shifts so jarringly to that of a 1960's Disney film that I expected Dick van Dyke and his infamous Cockney accent to make an appearance.
In a way, this film is like a longer telling of A Trip to the Moon. There is some exposition about a new chemical compound called Cavorite, which can be painted onto objects to prevent gravity from working on them. Driven by scientific curiosity and (once again) the belief that the moon is rich in minerals like gold, the travellers apply Cavorite to a bathysphere-like vessel, free the sphere from Earth's pull, and guide it to the moon. There they encounter very rough, mountainous terrain (similar to that depicted in the other movies mentioned here), and a fantastical race of insect-like creatures (which are quickly dubbed "Selenites") who attempt to hold them captive. A chase and escape follow.
During their voyage, the makeshift astronauts encounter zero gravity, need to cope with the difference in air pressure between the lunar surface and their space capsule, and don homemade spacesuits, fashioned from pre-SCUBA diving suits. (Once they descend into the underground tunnels of the Selenites, though, they are able to shed these suits and breathe an artificially generated atmosphere.) These concessions to science are minor, however (their spacesuits are supposedly airtight, yet their hands are bare), and very much like A Trip to the Moon, this film focuses on the fantasy of space travel, other worlds, and bizarre creatures. It is also worth noting that in First Men in the Moon, as in all of the films mentioned here, more technical emphasis is given to the propulsion and operation of the spacecraft than to life support systems and the day-to-day living necessities of the astronauts, as if the latter is the least problematic aspect of each voyage.
In her book Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film, Kathryn Kalinak relays an anecdote from composer David Raksin about working with Alfred Hitchcock on Lifeboat. Raksin was told that Hitchcock had decided to forgo a musical score, apparently because he did not think music should be present in the middle of the ocean. "Where would the music come from?" the director was quoted as saying. Raksin sent his reply: "Go back and ask him where the camera comes from and I'll tell him where the music comes from!"1
I think of that story every time such mechanisms of film construction — the ones we usually take for granted — are brought to the fore. Such was the case when I watched one of the special features on the DVD release of Moon (2009). The director, Duncan Jones, talks through the construction of a shot of a rover vehicle traversing the surface of the moon. Jones explains the different elements that were composited into the finished shot, finally mentioning, almost as an aside, the addition of artificial lens flare. There is nothing at first surprising about this revelation, as lens flare is something most film watchers recognize in shots where the camera is pointed toward a strong light source. Only in this case, there was no camera pointed at a strong light source — the flare was added only to make it appear there was.
What is unusual about this is that the convention for mainstream narrative film is to conceal the evidence of the film's construction, to hide the fact that what is being presented is artifical, an illusion, and to convince the audience that what is on screen — however fantastic — is, in a sense, real, or at the very least unmediated by a camera. Modern special effects are able to assist in this greatly due to their ability to create the "perfect shot," one which could not be captured by a real camera. Still, shots like this one are made to look like they were captured by a real camera.
Perhaps the rationale for this is that, in an ironic way, film has to look real, but not "too real." Artificial lens flare in the shot from Moon may unexpectedly make the shot look more realistic than without it. On one hand, we want the images on screen to look entirely real and to envelop us in a different reality. On the other, we are aware that fantastic scenes such as the ones depicted in Moon and other science fiction films are not real. By making even computer-generated shots appear as if they were captured by an actual camera, the shots might seem more realistic, as they appear to conform to what we understand as the reality of traditional and physical filmmaking — it may suggest, perhaps subconsciously, that what is being shown actually happened in front of a camera.
Similar examples of this are camera shake and when a camera lens is splattered with liquid from something in the shot. Another one that I always notice is when the camera breaks through the surface of water, especially when the lens is half submerged. These effects reveal to varying degrees the presence of the movie camera. (A similar example from television is the sitcom laugh track, intended to give the impression that the program is being acted in front of a live audience.)
An opposite phenomenon occurs when we are shown something that was supposedly captured by a camera within the film. Characters watching security camera footage is a prime example, and the problem occurs when the footage they are watching, which should appear to be shot by a single and stationary camera, consists instead of multiple edited shots from multiple angles. Another "moon" movie, First Men in the Moon (1964), ends with another example: as a lunar landing party evacuates a collapsing underground city, people on Earth watch the entire event on television — an event shot by cameras and camera operators that we know are not present in the story. How would Hitchcock have explained that?
