Essentially a remake of Méliès' famous 'A Trip to the Moon' (1903), Segundo de Choman's film opens with some wizardly men cavorting in a moonlit garden who decide to send an expedition to the moon. The film cuts to an observatory where the wizards plan the trip, including an excellent matte shot in which the journey takes place on their blackboard. Next is a very well done scene in a factory where the moon-bound projectile is being built (which includes some slapstick comedy), then to the giant cannon itself, again a very nice forced-perspective background painting. The space-gun is loaded in a scene very similar to Méliès' but involving soldiers rather than women in sailor suits and fired. Unlike Méliès' iconic image of the shell landing in the Man-in-the-Moon's eye, Choman's shell flies into his gaping mouth, apparently causing some indigestion. The explorers disembark, witness a sunrise and then, like the original film, take a nap in the snow. After an adventure with some giant mushrooms, they are captured by acrobatic moon-men (unlike Méliès' film, there are no elaborate 'selenite' costumes) and taken to the hall of the Moon King where they are entertained by dancing moon-maidens. Unfortunately, one of the explorers accosts a dancer, angering the King who orders his men to kick the interlopers out. In a scene right out of Méliès' film: pursued by moon-men, the Earthman return to their space-shell, which is precariously perched on a ledge, tip it over and fall back to Earth (oddly, the return trip seems to include a 'stage separation'). They land in the garden where the adventure began and proudly introduce their colleagues to the lovely moon-maid who has accompanied them home to Earth. The film is an unabashed copy of Méliès' film but some of the images (in the factory and of the space-gun) are better than the original film and there are some beautiful colorisation effects using the Pathé stencil process. A must see for fans of silent fantasy films (there are a number of copies on-line of varying length (the film is about 7 minutes) and image quality).