Destination Moon
Film and Lecture by Kevin Atkins
Of all the science fiction films of the 1950s that are today acknowledged as "classics", Destination Moon is the least known and most under-appreciated, probably because it offers so little to the casual viewer. 

Ironically enough, it is the very qualities that make this film so important that doom it as entertainment: its technical accuracy; its deliberately low-key, almost documentary approach; and above all its deadly earnestness – there are no cheap thrills here. Read more.
Sadly, this means that although Destination Moon is a landmark in the development of the science fiction film, and a pioneering work in the true sense of the word, it can really only be correctly estimated by the viewer who approaches it with some knowledge of its historical importance, and an active sense of good will. 

You will find no aliens, no monsters, no ray-guns, no strange women in leotards – and no "love interest" – in Destination Moon; just a painstakingly factual account of how mankind might go about building a rocket that would take him to the moon.
Despite this (or perhaps because of it: this was, after all, an era when the expression "Popular Science" was not an oxymoron!), at the time of its first release the film was enormously successful, grossing about ten times its outlay. 

Those of us of living in a time when space shuttle flights are so commonplace as to barely rate a mention on the news any more, might find it hard to understand what the fuss was all about. To appreciate – indeed, to enjoy Destination Moon as it deserves, we must put ourselves in the place of the audiences of the 1950s, first confronted with a concept so radical, so outrageous, as a rocket to the moon – and then told that it could really happen. (The film is rightly listed in NASA’s official timeline of the history of space travel.) 

Destination Moon was made at a time when humanity stood on the brink of an amazing step forward, and by people who were among the first to grasp that such a thing was possible. While the onscreen action is, unfortunately but undeniably, rather stodgy, the production as a whole is nevertheless infused with a sense of wonder, of optimism, of simple faith in man and what he could achieve. Destination Moon is remarkable – and, looked at from the correct perspective, thrilling – for being the only space flight film made in the heyday of the science fiction film that is truly about space flight. This is not a story about being on the moon, but of getting there; the adventure is all in the doing.

You're all invited to join me, Kevin Atkins, for a special screening of the film along with a look at how the effects were produced on Sunday morning at Starfest.

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