First Men in the Moon (1964)

User Rating:

6.6/10   

Director:

Nathan Juran

Writers:

Nigel Kneale (screenplay) &
Jan Read (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

20 November 1964 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

H.G. Wells' Astounding Adventure in Dynamation!

Plot:

Based on the HG Wells story. The world is delighted when a space craft containing a crew made up of the world's astronauts lands on the moon...

Plot Keywords:

Moon | Space | Planetary Alignment | Moon Men | Reminiscence

US TV Schedule:

Mon. July 20

9:30 AM

TCM

Cast

Edward Judd	...	Arnold Bedford
Martha Hyer	...	Katherine 'Kate' Callender
Lionel Jeffries	...	Joseph Cavor
Miles Malleson	...	Dymchurch Registrar
Norman Bird	...	Stuart, Moon Landing Crew
Gladys Henson	...	Nursing Home Matron
Hugh McDermott	...	Richard Challis, UN Space Agency
Betty McDowall	...	Margaret Hoy, UN Space Agency

Also Known As:

H.G. Wells' First Men in the Moon (UK) (complete title)

Runtime:

103 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) | Mono (Westrex Recording System) (35 mm prints)

Certification:

Australia:PG | Finland:K-12 | Norway:11 | Sweden:11 | UK:U | West Germany:12 (nf)

Filming Locations:

Chertsey, Surrey, England, UK

Company:

Ameran Films

Trivia:

Peter Finch appears briefly as a messenger. He was reputedly only visiting the set when the original actor assigned to play the part failed to show up.

Goofs:

Factual errors: The lunar eclipse takes place far too fast, and the Earth should look much larger than the Sun, not about the same size.

Quotes:

Joseph Cavor: Yet to fight in a war is considered an honor. Well, it's difficult to explain, but men who are killed in battle are heroes. That's odd, isn't it?
The Grand Lunar: Men enjoy to make war?
Joseph Cavor: No. No, they detest it!
The Grand Lunar: Then if they make war, they are defective.
Joseph Cavor: Well... well, we're not perfect. Well, mankind is still developing. We're not, we're not perfect. There are men of peace.
The Grand Lunar: My concern is with the men of violence, the men who kill. Soon others will be coming from Earth. Our galleries will be strewn with dead.
Joseph Cavor: There needn't *be* any others! There needn't *be* any others! I'm the only one who holds the secret of Cavorite.
The Grand Lunar: Then you and your secret will remain here on the Moon.
Arnold Bedford: [shouts] Cavor!
[leaps from hiding]
[...]

Movie Connections:

Featured in Fantastic Fantasy Fright-o-Rama Show Vol. 1 (1996) (V)

Good reasons changes are made between page and screen

Someone who had read H. G. Wells' "First Men in the Moon" and then sat down to watch this adaptation may well be aghast at the opening sequences, which deal with a "modern-day" mission to the moon, as opposed to the 1899 setting of the novel. But stay with it, and you'll find that the contemporary setting is just a framework to introduce us to the story basically as Wells wrote it: a fantasy about a trip to the moon in the Victorian era.

So why did the filmmakers choose to frame the story in this flashback format? Simple. At the time Wells wrote his novel, the very idea of a trip to the moon was fantastical; heavier-than-air flight hadn't even been invented yet, let alone space travel. But by the time the movie was made in the '60s, we were on our way to the moon, JFK having stated it as an objective. While still a gripping, exciting idea, a trip to the moon was no longer a fantasy, but a hardware-based reality. (In fact, the modern spacecraft depicted are very much like what ultimately made the trip in 1969: an orbiting command module and a spidery-legged landing unit, not the old saucer-craft or delta-winged ships of the '50s. So while "dated," these opening scenes aren't foolish. And the international crew on board--since it's a mission of the UN, not just the USA--reflect today's reality of the International Space Station; reality has finally caught up with this fiction.)

So, how to make what was becoming a here-and-now reality (in 1964, the Gemini missions were beginning, paving the way for the Apollo program) back into a magical fantasy? By having the modern explorers discover evidence that their "first" lunar landing had been predated by a trip in 1899! One of the voyagers, Bedford (Edward Judd) is found to be still alive and very old at the time of the contemporary mission, and his tale is told in flashback, a structure much like that of "Little Big Man" or "Titanic."

Some other changes are made as well. The long trip to the moon reads well in the book, but if filmed as described (the two men float in darkness and silence inside the sphere, as the unsecured baggage gradually gravitates to the center of the "room"), it would have made incredibly boring viewing, so the scripter adds a few vignettes to lighten the journey. The riot of plant life that erupts across the lunar surface at sunrise would have elicited hoots from a modern audience, and so is eliminated on screen; yet the just as unscientific touch of having the men cavort around the surface in diving suits (which would have swelled up like balloons in the vacuum of space, to say nothing of the men's exposed hands) clearly signal that this is, after all, a fantasy, and not "true" science fiction. And Cavor's audiences with the Grand Lunar, which take place in the book after Bedford has returned to earth, are reduced in the movie to a single hearing which happens while Bedford and his girl (keep reading) are still on the moon: rather than just hear it described, we see it happen, which is, of course, a much more cinematic handling.

While Bedford and Cavor make a stag trip in the novel, the movie adds a woman, Kate Callender (Martha Hyer), Bedford's fiancee. Her inclusion isn't gratuitous; by being in places on the moon where Bedford and Cavor aren't, she helps the story cover more ground in less time than otherwise would have been the case. Besides, she's the sort of woman whom Wells, a feminist and self-described "free thinker," would have liked: she's tough, smart, brave, and doesn't put up with much. She's the epitome of the "new woman" of that turn-of-the-century era, the sort of restless woman who was learning such manly things as how to operate a newfangled typewriting machine so she could get a job in an office. As an American in Britain, she's a bit of a traveler herself; she symbolizes Britain's exploratory, empire-building, "new world"-seeking, colonizing impulses (indeed, upon arrival, Cavor claims the moon for Her Majesty); and she's the only person involved in the mission who has enough sense to bring a gun.

While all the performances are equal to the task (especially Lionel Jeffries' comically high-strung Cavor, plus a one-scene appearance by the impish Miles Malleson as a city clerk), this isn't an actors' picture, but an effects picture. And Ray Harryhausen delivers, as he always does. The Grand Lunar in particular is a haunting, whispery presence, curiously but coolly regarding these human intruders and weighing their fates. Even the music works: Laurie Johnson's score, evocative of an awed sense of wonder married to a towering adventure, is worthy of Bernard Hermann.

You may have guessed this is an old favorite of mine. I saw it as a child, when it was new. It hasn't aged a day.