<P> A Trip to the Moon was met with especially large enthusiasm in the United States, where (to Méliès's chagrin) its piracy by Lubin, Selig, Edison and others gave it wide distribution . Exhibitors in New York City, Washington D.C., Cleveland, Detroit, New Orleans, and Kansas City reported on the film's great success in their theaters . The film also did well in other countries, including Germany, Canada, and Italy, where it was featured as a headline attraction through 1904 . </P> <P> A Trip to the Moon was one of the most popular films of the first few years of the twentieth century, rivaled only by a small handful of others (similarly spectacular Méliès films such as The Kingdom of the Fairies and The Impossible Voyage among them). Late in life, Méliès remarked that A Trip to the Moon was "surely not one of my best," but acknowledged that it was widely considered his masterpiece and that "it left an indelible trace because it was the first of its kind ." The film which Méliès was proudest of was Humanity Through the Ages, a serious historical drama now presumed lost . </P> <P> After Méliès's financial difficulties and decline, most copies of his prints were lost . In 1917, his offices were occupied by the French military, who melted down many of Méliès's films to gather the traces of silver from the film stock and make boot heels from the celluloid . When the Théâtre Robert - Houdin was demolished in 1923, the prints kept there were sold by weight to a vendor of second - hand film . Finally, in that same year, Méliès had a moment of anger and burned all his remaining negatives in his garden in Montreuil . In 1925, he began selling toys and candy from a stand in the Gare Montparnasse in Paris . A Trip to the Moon was largely forgotten to history and went unseen for years . </P> <P> Thanks to the efforts of film history devotées, especially René Clair, Jean - George Auriol, and Paul Gilson, Méliès and his work were rediscovered in the late 1920s . A "Gala Méliès" was held at the Salle Pleyel in Paris on 16 December 1929 in celebration of the filmmaker, and he was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1931 . During this renaissance of interest in Méliès, the cinema manager Jean Mauclaire and the early film experimenter Jean Acme LeRoy both set out independently to locate a surviving print of A Trip to the Moon . Mauclaire obtained a copy from Paris in October 1929, and LeRoy one from London in 1930, though both prints were incomplete; Mauclaire's lacked the first and last scenes, and LeRoy's was missing the entire final sequence featuring the parade and commemorative statue . These prints were occasionally screened at retrospectives (including the Gala Méliès), avant - garde cinema showings, and other special occasions, sometimes in presentations by Méliès himself . </P>

A trip to the moon featured the special effects of