The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon

In this film, Méliès concocts a combination fairy- and morality tale about the foolishness of trying to look too deeply into the workings of an unstable and inscrutable universe. At a medieval school, an old astronomer begins to teach a class of young men, all armed with telescopes, about the art of scrutinising an imminent eclipse. When a mechanical clock strikes twelve, all the young men rush to the windows and fix their telescopes on the heavens. The old astronomer climbs up to his personal observatory, where he and his two assistants, each armed with a phallic telescope only slightly smaller than the old man’s outsized equipment, also look skyward. We then see what they see […], the Man in the Moon, a coy baby-faced lad, passes in front of Mr. Sun, who is a lecherous tongue-smacking goblin, and there transpires what appears to be […] a little episode of empyrean intimacy. (more: http://cinemathequefroncaise.com/Chapter3-2/CH_03_PIONEERS_02.html)