Entre la terre et la lune, ou de l’antropomorphisation des astres

This study investigates a movement that we can find in particular (but not only) in Voyage dans la Lune (1902), which has often been read, even by the most informed researchers, as a point-of-view shot, or in any case as a subjective movement. Namely, a movement which would simulate the gaze of the characters who approach the satellite, or the gaze of the spectator who advances towards the Moon with the camera. On the contrary, this study demonstrate not only that Méliès did not practice here the point-of-view shot, but also that this movement is a very complex and problematic passage, which represents among other things a rapprochement of the Moon, and which is thus part of an anthropomorphic representation of the celestial bodies, at the time very popular and still contaminated by a pre-Copernican and a pre-Ptolemaic conception, where astronomy and magic can mix and merge. In Méliès, actually, this movement assumes the typical traits of his eminently magical and féerique imagination and extends a certain practice of the theatrical scene that Jacques Malthête very well synthesized by the formula: “Mobility of the decor, fixity of the camera”.