WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS!!!
Of all of the animation genius Ray Harryhausen's films, this is my favourite, partly because I am a huge H G Wells fan, and also because I think the characterisation and acting are better than pretty well any of his other movies. Don't get me wrong, Harryhausen is a God... of model animation and sfx. But all too often his films, their amazing effects notwithstanding, are slightly pedestrian in feel (Jason and the Argonauts excepted). Anyway, back to First Men in the Moon...
As ever with an adaptation, liberties have been taken with the source material. In Wells's case this is understandable, as, in common with many of his novels, the narrative structure is slightly odd, and not best suited to the cinema. In the case of First Men in the Moon, in the novel, after Bedford leaves the moon by himself, having become separated from Cavor, we only learn about Cavor's own adventures through a fragmentary series of long wireless telegraph transmissions he makes from the lunar realm, intercepted by a (fictitious) Dutch radio pioneer, Julius Wendigee. Clearly, this rather passive device would be difficult to adapt, lacking, as it does, the necessary human engagement. An equally radical departure is the incorporation of a completely new character, Kate, Bedford's Bostonian fiancée. Obviously this was to sell the film in the US. However, she is a satisfyingly sparky presence, and does not detract from the action.
The modern framing device is superbly conceived and executed. One expects nothing less from the scriptwriter, the brilliant Nigel Kneale (of Quatermass fame, and a great Wells fan). The twist in the tale ending is a wonderful inversion of Wells's own conclusion to The War of the Worlds, and ends the film on a dark (some might say sour) note, surprising for a Harryhausen production.
There are some wonderful performances. Lionel Jeffries might be accused of going way over the top, but given the thin-line-between-madness-and-genius brilliance of his character, Cavor, such eccentricity is entirely plausible. And it certainly makes for an enjoyable performance. Cavor's pride when he unveils the Sphere to Bedford (Edward Judd) is a joy, and a lovely counterpoint to his usual near-hysteria in the earlier scenes (forgivable, one is tempted to say, as the character clearly becomes more stressed as the time for departure nears). Edward Judd is a muscular contrast to Cavor, an unthinking, instinctive man of action to Cavor's dithering intellectual. He also exhibits an unpleasant xenophobia on the moon. Nevertheless, in the novel Bedford can be quite violent, too, so one can blame Wells for the character's shortcomings, not Kneale. In fact, to digress, an interesting point is that in his novels Wells does not romanticize his first-person narrators. Bedford can be a brute, just as the unnamed narrator of The War of the Worlds is, by turns, cowardly and does not shrink from murder (or, at best, manslaughter) to protect himself. In short, his characters, for all their sketchiness, often act realistically. Judd's Bedford is also amusingly spivvish, a charming rogue, really more an anti-hero than anything else. His fevered dreams of commercial empire are just as they are in the book. Martha Hyer's Kate has been mentioned, and there are some amusing cameos. Miles Malleson is Miles Mallesonish as the registrar, as dithery and absent-minded as his bishop was in Hammer's Hound of the Baskervilles. Cavor's workmen, with their proletarian slackness and petty demarcation of responsibilities, owe more to conservative 1960s fears of the growing power of the trades unions than to Wells, but provide amusing comic relief. Watch out, too, for a brief appearance by Peter Finch, then a huge star, as the bailiff who serves papers on Bedford, stepping in as a favour to the director to replace a bit-part player who failed to turn up at the last minute.
Of course, another dramatic change was to abandon Wells's breathable lunar surface. In the novel, during the lunar night the very air freezes to become slush on a barren surface. Come the day, and the frozen air melts, turns into an atmosphere, and giant mushrooms and other weird vegetation flourish briefly. Cinema audiences would laugh heartily. But Wells's sublunar civilization is preserved, so the change is not great. In the novel, much is made of the structure of the Selenite society. In fact, this was the main point of the book, Wells being interested in constructing an alien, rather ant-like, civilization - his anti-gravity paint Cavorite was merely a device, a pseudo-scientific deus ex machina, to get his narrators there without the bother of some massive engineering project, such as Verne's space cannon. The novel's bewildering multipicity of Selenite castes is jettisoned in the movie for simplicity, there being just workers and managers in the film, ruled over (as in the book) by the big-brained Grand Lunar. Although necessitated by the tight budget, this is rather a shame, as although it would be difficult to convey all the nuances of Wells's Selenite society, certain images would be marvelous on the screen: the small but large-lunged heralds with their trumpet-like mouths who precede the Grand Lunar on his procession; the immobile Selenite intellectuals whose vast jelly-like brains necessitate their transportation in sedan-chairs; the swift, spider-like messengers; the list goes on. The central point, though, that of adaptation to one's work, a kind of grotesque reductio ad absurdum of the Victorian class system, is not completely lost in the film, being echoed in the workers placed in suspended animation while they are not needed. Cavor's audience before the Grand Lunar, while condensing much of his speech in the book, nevertheless adheres to the spirit of it, especially in terms of his reckless honesty about the warlike tendencies of mankind.
In visual terms, the film is a delight. The Victorian flavour is evoked beautifully, the Sphere itself appearing to be a plausibly converted bathysphere. The modern moon landing is effective, lwjoslin of Houston pointing out on this site, quite rightly, the attempt to realize contemporary NASA design philosophy. The Selenite civilization is superbly presented, especially considering the low budget, with awesome caverns, spectacular lens pits, stark palaces carved from the lunar rock. And sparing as Ray's trademark Dynamation creations are, being restricted to a caterpillar-like mooncalf of leviathan proportions, a few Selenite intellectuals, and the shadowy Grand Lunar himself, they are no less accomplished for that. The mass of Selenite workers are played, somewhat obviously, by children in suits, but given when the film was made, one can hardly complain. And Laurie Johnson's music is magnificent, especially the swelling orchestration as Cavor slowly mounts the immense staircase on his way to his audience with the Grand Lunar.
Finally, I must praise the DVD release. Presented in widescreen, with a restored picture and stereo sound, it really does the film justice, and paralyses the poor VHS recording. Also, the one hour documentary extra 'The Harryhausen Chronicles' is a must-have, containing wonderful interviews with Ray, and extensive footage of his early 16mm experiments. There is also, for die-hard Wells fans, the clip of his 1949 trial film, in 16mm, of a tentacled Martian emerging from its smoking cylinder that Ray did to sell his abortive War of the Worlds project.
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