A Trip to Mars (1910)

Film review #731

Director: Ashley Miller

SYNOPSIS: A scientist discovers a powder for reverse gravity, and uses it to float to Mars, where he encounters strange creatures.

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: A Trip to Mars is a 1910 sci-fi short film produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company. In this four and a half minute film, we open with a interstitial card that says how a scientist discovers “reverse gravity” in the form of a powder. He uses this to flat up into the sky, eventually arriving on Mars. There, he sees some humanoid trees and a giant demon head that breathes ice on him, turning him into a snowball that falls back to Earth. Annoyed, the scientist throws away his reverse gravity powder, causing the room to turn upside down. Not much else to say given the short runtime (which would have been fairly standard for the time), but the effects of the giant head and tree costumes are nice enough. The only surviving copy is fairly degraded though, so it’s difficult to grasp the details.

While this film is the first film to feature Mars as a setting and the first American sci-fi film, it is very much derivative of the French film A Trip to the Moon by George Melies, which is a similar plot but with the moon instead of Mars, and the concept of reverse gravity being appropriated from French author Jules Verne. Essentially, it’s just ‘borrowing from the French.’ Around this time, the early dominance of the French in cinema had declined, with other countries and companies (such as Edison Manufacturing) were able to develop their own movie-making equipment. But yes, it’s very derivative of what came before and offers nothing new (perhaps unsurprising given the Edison name attached to it…). It’s nicely made for the time, and some nice camera trickery and effects that have been done before.