A Trip to the Past

              Films nowadays are criticized or evaluated base on their concept and technical aspects. Most films that win awards and love by many are either conceptually good or technically amazing, or both.

               During the film showing of Trip to the Moon in the class, I was really bored and somehow violated. If I would be present during the premier of the film and criticize it based on the films I had watched in the current time frame, the film would turn out to be a disaster. 

              The film did not have a very good cinematography. The faces of the characters couldn’t be recognize and one could only identify an actor from the others through the color of his clothing. There were minimal camera angles that one could suspect there were only three or four. The moon setting and other props were not really realistic and very farfetch from the truth, that one could feel violated. The actors could not also utter sound, making the film hard to understand-the audience was subjected to assume the progress of the story. Another flaw, it had also conceptual inconsistencies. An example would be the scene when the astronomers were going back to Earth-one of them was left outside the space capsule but when they arrived Earth, they were complete. One should assume that the astronomer outside would be left behind. That kind of flaw could drive the audience to confusion. One good thing was that at least the music had done its purpose. It was the setter of the mood and that made the audience at least understand what was happening in the film.

              But, if I am to criticize the movie based on the technology present during the film was premiered, I would be very amaze with it. At that time, most of the films were black and white, but the film had colors in it making it at least impressive. Though the actors were not able to utter sound, there was the background music that could at least translate the mood of a specific scene. At that time, "discoveries" on the moon were not yet  discovered so I believe, some inconsistencies on the scientific concepts presented could be accpetable. The concept itself of the film was also fitted to that time period it was created since assumptions on what could be on the moon or how to travel going to the space were really interesting and not yet developed.

              In the cases I presented, I believe that the film could be good or bad according to the perspective a critic would use. Using the 21^st century’s standards, the film would be disastrous but using the standards at the time it was premiered, the film would be impressive. This is for the reason that, the technology present at the time the film was premiered was very much poorer from what we have today.

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Nikka Marie Sales