SUENO DE LA LUNA (1905)
aka Reve a la lune, Lover of the Moon
Article 4007 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-19-2012
Directed by Gaston Velle and Ferdinand Zecca
Featuring Ferdinand Zecca
Country: France
What it is: Silent trick short

A drunkard given to hallucinations dreams that he travels to the moon.

This silent short is mostly focused on the hallucinations of a drunkard in somewhat the same fashion as THE DREAM OF A RAREBIT FIEND. The moon only comes into play once he has fallen asleep, and he tries to reach the moon first by climbing the building to get to the roof, and then riding to the moon on one of the structures at the top of the building. The most startling sequence here borrows somewhat from A TRIP TO THE MOON, only instead of the moon’s eye being hit by the rocket, we see the drunkard climbing into the moon’s mouth. I wish the print was a little better so I could figure out how they did it, but it is one of the more impressive special effects in the early days of the silents. At any rate, I’m glad to salvage this one off of the “ones that got away” list.