The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon

One of a number of oddities in the filmography of Georges Méliès, this feature combines an offbeat story with an array of visual effects to create an interesting, if strange, one-reel film. Most of the visual effects are close to Méliès's usual standard, and on the few occasions when they are not, it is usually the idea that is uninteresting, as opposed to the execution being faulty. Only on a couple of occasions do some of the seams show; the rest of the time Méliès's craftsmanship makes the best use of his resources.

The narrative intertwines two subplots, both of which are unusual in different ways. The main story shows a distinguished professor who is trying to teach astronomy to a group of eager but restless students. This is sandwiched around some sequences that depict the activities of various celestial bodies, which are given quasi-human personalities.

The scenes of the professor and his students consist mostly of slapstick, which is of uneven quality but has some good moments. The middle sequence has a weird courtship scene between a female moon and a male sun (both of whom are remarkably unattractive, for whatever reason), followed by a weird and suggestive succession of images of the activities of some other anthropomorphic astronomical objects.

The individual visual effects are not always particularly impressive, but the sequence as a whole lends itself to all kinds of possible responses and speculations. There are probably a lot of different ways that you could take it, depending on whether you were a Freudian, a Jungian, or a devotee of some other school of psychology.

All of this makes the movie not really one of Méliès's best or most impressive efforts, but it's certainly unusual. He had quite an imagination, and when he gave free rein to it, the results were always interesting, if nothing else.