Voyage à travers l'impossible

Georges Méliès: Voyage à travers l'impossible (1904). Photo: IMDb.

ACCADDE NEL 1904: IL FILM DEL CENTENARIO / IT HAPPENED IN 1904: A CENTENNIAL TRIBUTE
VOYAGE À TRAVERS L’IMPOSSIBLE / AN IMPOSSIBLE VOYAGE (Star-Film, F 1904)
    Dir: Georges Méliès; cast: Georges Méliès, Fernande Albany, May de Lavergne, Jehanne d’Alcy; 35 mm, 1203 ft, 20’ (16 fps), color (from a hand-colored nitrate positive), George Eastman House.
    Didascalie in inglese / English intertitles.
    Grand piano: Antonio Coppola.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fuori quadro – Accadde nel 1904, 16 Oct 2004

Paolo Cherchi Usai (GCM): "Exactly 100 years ago, in the autumn of 1904, Georges Méliès adapted for the screen a popular show premiered in 1882 at the Théâtre de la Gaîté. In the original version Jules Verne and Adolphe D’Ennery had thought of an imaginary trip to the center of the Earth; Méliès took it a step further and brought the mad scientists of the Institute of Incoherent Geography onto the surface of the Sun, after a roller-coaster ride from the Swiss landscape of the Jungfrau to Mount Righi. This dazzling sequel to Le Voyage dans la lune (1902) was the most expensive production ever for the Star-Film company (costing over 37,000 Francs of the time), surpassing its predecessor in ambition and detail if not in inspiration. An instant box-office hit worldwide, the adventures of Doctor Mabouloff gave the Magician of Montreuil the opportunity to display his flair for the mechanics of space travel, the personification of celestial bodies, and flamboyant hand-coloring. As James Frazer points out in Artificially Arranged Scenes (1979, p. 149), Voyage à travers l'impossible “is put together with the logic of a dream. Méliès ignores pragmatic considerations and matters of cause and effect. The film jolts from one moment of heightened activity to the next digesting events, ignoring rationality or probability with the uninhibited freedom of a child”." – Paolo Cherchi Usai (GCM)

AA: *  A highlight. A beautiful print and presentation of the fantastic masterpiece. Actual duration of the screening: 22'24".