Le Voyage à travers l'impossible (1904)
Directed by Georges Méliès

Film Review

Georges Méliès was instrumental in popularising cinema in its early years, his experience as a showman and flair for invention making him eminently well-suited for exploiting the commercial possibilities of the new medium of mass entertainment.  Such was the extraordinary popularity of Le Voyage dans la lune (1902) that Méliès suddenly found he had the resources and the confidence to attempt an even grander foray into the fantastic, this time one that went to the sun and back in less time than it takes to toast a slice of bread.  Inspired by an 1882 stage play of the same title by Jules Verne and Adolphe d'Ennery, Le Voyage à travers l'impossible  (a.k.a. The Impossible Voyage or The Voyage Across the Impossible) was made two years after Méliès's iconic lunar fantasy and was the longest film he had made up until this point.  Running to just over twenty minutes (almost three times the length of the lunar trip), it was an incredibly ambitious production, the equivalent of today's special effects saturated Hollywood blockbuster.  The grandest cinematic spectacle so far, it could hardly fail to be a phenomenal global success, and in fact it was one of the most widely seen films of the first decade of the 20th century.

Le Voyage à travers l'impossible is structurally and stylistically virtually identical to Le Voyage dans la lune, to the point that it very nearly resembles a more ambitious remake.  Méliès employs the same camera trickery (including multiple exposure and stop motion photography), similarly outlandish sets (which he himself designed) and even the same visual gags, and of course the sun is depicted, like the moon, with a benign human face.  This time round, the comic absurdity is stretched even further, and Méliès takes us way beyond scientific possibility and far into the realms of surreal fantasy, with bizarre means of exploration that defy not only the laws of physics but also the bounds of narrative logic.  It is probably the weirdest and most zanily uninhibited film that Méliès ever made, but it is also one of his most delightfully humorous and captivating.  The effects may look a bit dodgy by today's standards, the plot may be all over the place, veering towards outright lunacy in parts, but this Mélièsian voyage into absurdity abounds with an infectious sense of fun, and once you start laughing it's impossible to stop.

Film Synopsis

A group of highly eminent scientists meet up to make preparations for a continent-spanning expedition, the like of which the world has never seen before.  The enthusiastic travellers are loaded onto a train which takes them to the Swiss Alps, where their journey will begin in earnest.  Surviving an almost disastrous car crash in the mountains, the party boards a train which, in an attempt to traverse a steep summit, suddenly shoots off into space and ends up being swallowed by the sun.  Luckily, the train comes equipped with an icebox which offers the unfortunate travellers refuge from the crushing heat of the sun, at the risk of freezing them to death...