A documentary by Eric Lange and Serge Bromberg. In English and French with English subtitles. Rated G. Opens Monday, May 21, at the Pacific Cinémathèque

The title of The Extraordinary Voyage refers to “A Trip to the Moon”, the 1902 short that made French filmmaker Georges Méliès an international sensation when cinema itself was brand new. The first special-effects movie has haunted popular culture in other ways, according to codirectors Eric Lange and Serge Bromberg, who argue that the 14-minute saga, based on a Jules Verne story, also encapsulates humanity’s yearning for connection with the greater universe.

That notion is supported by Tom Hanks, caught speaking during a 1998 re-creation of the short made for his PBS series, From the Earth to the Moon. More current commentary comes from filmmakers you’d expect to expound on the childlike qualities of early cinema and on Méliès’s role as magician-turned-storyteller. These include Amélie’s Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’s Michel Gondry, and The Artist director Michel Hazanavicius.

Notably absent is Martin Scorsese, whose Hugo rather ploddingly retraced the tragedy of Méliès’ fall from theatrical grace, even before the advent of sound, and depicted the destruction of his original negatives—a “symbolic suicide”, as veteran director Costa-Gavras puts it here.

Narrated by Bromberg, in English with a heavy French accent, the hour-long film uses snippets of rediscovered prints (less than half of the director’s 500 shorts now exist in any form). This is edifying, except when they utilize the current TV-promo trick of dropping in other archival material as “reaction shots”. The last 15 minutes are devoted entirely, and grippingly, to the tricky process of restoring the original, hand-painted “Trip to the Moon”. It’s shown with the doc in its finished form, complete with a fittingly whimsical new score by the French group AIR. All these CGI-assisted decades later, it still hits the bull’s-eye.