Silent Movie Night – FREE

Our second in the Silent Film Series, Friday January 20th Fairlee Community Arts Presents:

A Trip to the Moon with George Melies, Victor Andre, Bleuette Bernon 1902 and Safety Last! 1923 starring Harold Loyd

A Trip to the Moon

Storyline: A group of astronomers go on an expedition to the moon.

An association of astronomers has convened to listen to the plan of Professor Barbenfouillis, their president, to fly to the moon. With the one dissenting voice quashed by Barbenfouillis and the other members, the plan is approved with Barbenfouillis choosing five others to accompany him. Most of the preparation for the trip is in building the vessel and launching mechanism, which resemble a large bullet and a large gun respectively. Hitting the moon in the eye, the six land safely at their destination. They find that much about the moon is wonderful and fantastical, but also that much is not what they would have liked to encounter as it is life threatening. They have to find a way to get out of their alien predicament to get back home safely.

Safety Last!

Storyline:  A boy leaves his small country town and heads to the big city to get a job.  As soon as he makes it big, his sweetheart will join him and marry him.  His enghusiasm to get ahead leads to some interesting situations.

Although neither as inspired as Chaplin’s best work nor as winningly surreal as the best of Keaton’s, Harold Lloyd’s films were equally funny. Lloyd built gags, milked them, and topped them just as brilliantly as did his competitors. Like Keaton, Lloyd was fond of slapstick with an element of danger and frequently concocted stunts with an element of risk. If he had himself doubled for the really dangerous feats, nobody should complain. It wasn’t widely publicized that an accident left Lloyd with only part of one hand. With his thumb and index finger missing he wore a trick glove with prosthetic digits. For ten years Lloyd did climbing gags with this handicap — sometimes fairly high off the ground.