The Fabulous Baron Munchausen

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen is a 1962 Czechoslovak romantic adventure film directed by Karel Zeman, based on the tales about Baron Munchausen. The film combines live-action with various forms of animation and is highly stylized, often evoking the engravings of Gustave Doré. A digital restoration of the film premiered on 5 September 2016 at the Telluride Film Festival in the United States. Plot The film begins with footsteps leading to a pond. The camera continually moves upwards to show the flight of butterflies, birds, and a progression of historical aircraft ending with a rocket ship travelling through space and landing on the Moon. The astronaut/cosmonaut leaves his spacecraft and sights other footsteps on the Moon leading him to an old phonograph, then a crashed rocket with a plaque reading Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon. Taken to a dinner table, the surprised space traveller meets the characters from Verne's book, as well as two other figures associated with fictional Moon voyages: Cyrano de Bergerac and Baron Munchausen. Inviting him to their table, the characters believe that the cosmonaut is a man actually from the Moon, and kindly treat him as a small child.